Recorded: Tuesday, July 24, 2012 

Did you know that a new federal law that takes place in October 2012 that will reduce payments to hospitals that have a higher than average readmission rate for AMI, heart failure and pneumonia patients?

One in five hospital discharges is complicated by an adverse event within 30 days and this often leads to visits to the emergency departments and readmissions. Research suggests that 76% of hospital readmissions are thought to be preventable. Not only do readmissions occur frequently but they are costly. MedPac estimated that hospital readmissions cost Medicare about $15 billion dollars.

Tune for this engaging 90-minute webinar by nurse attorney Sue Dill Calloway who will discuss the impact of this new federal law and discuss the issue of how to prevent hospital readmissions.

Learning Objectives:

• Recall why the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will reduce payments to hospitals that have a higher than average rate of hospital readmissions after 2012
• Explain why one of the 34 NQF Safe Practices for Better Healthcare is in the discharge process
• Describe why hospitals should have a team assembled to look at ways to prevent unnecessary readmissions
• Discuss the importance of getting the discharge summary into the hands of the primary care physician before the first post hospital visit
• Recall the importance of using teach back to make sure the patient understands the discharge instructions

Target Audience:

• CEO
• CFO
• Chief Medical Officers (CMO)
• Chief Nursing Officers (CNO)
• Compliance Officers
• Nurses
• Pharmacists
• Nurse educators
• Joint commission directors
• Director of regulatory affairs
• Risk managers
• Hospital legal counsel
• Performance improvement director and staff
• Director of health information management (HIM)
• Dieticians
• And anyone else who is interested in preventing unnecessary hospital readmissions

Bonus Tools:

• Different transition studies such as: RED project to reengineer the discharge process, care transitions intervention (Coleman), transitional care model (Naylor), STARR, GRACE, and Guided Care
• CMS Hospital CoPs on discharge planning, The Joint Commission discharge planning standards, and the questions on the CMS proposed worksheet for hospitals on the discharge planning standards

Level: All levels 
 
Sue Dill Calloway, R.N., M.S.N, J.D. is a nurse attorney and President of Patient Safety and Healthcare Consulting and Education. She is also the Chief Learning Officer for the Emergency Medicine Patient Safety Foundation. Sue has been a medical and legal consultant for over 30 years. She has done many educational programs for nurses, physicians, and other health care providers on topics such as nursing law, ethics and nursing, malpractice prevention, HIPAA medical record confidentiality, EMTALA anti-dumping law, Joint Commission and CMS   issues, documentation, medication errors, medical errors, pain management, federal laws for nursing, sentinel events, MRI Safety, legal issues in surgery, patient safety, and other similar topics. Ms. Calloway received her AD in nursing from Central Ohio Technical College, her BA, BSN, MSN (summa cum laude) and JD (with honors) degrees are from Capital University in Columbus.  She is a member of many professional organizations and has a certificate in insurance from the American Insurance Institute.

Participation:

Each listener participates in the continuing education activity by listening to the webinar and completing the online post test and evaluation.

Accreditation Statement:

AHC Media is accredited as a provider of continuing nursing education by the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Commission on Accreditation.

Credit Designation:

This activity has been approved for 1.5 nursing contact hours using a 60-minute contact hour.

Provider approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing, Provider # 14749, for 1.5 Contact Hours.

Sponsor:

The sponsor of this educational activity is AHC Media.

Refund Policy:

If you are not able to attend for any reason, please notify us as soon as possible. Webinar cancellations received prior to the start time of the webinar are fully refundable. If you prefer, you may substitute an upcoming webinar for the one you originally registered for.