A new study appearing in Health Services Research lends support to the argument of hospital operators that patients’ odds of being readmitted within 30 days of an inpatient stay may have more to do with the type of community the patient is released into than the quality of the care provided by the hospital.

The American Hospital Association is aiming to be one of the key groups that will fill the need for healthcare improvement professionals from different organizations to collaborate and share best practices.

Participation in the government’s Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) incentive payment program went up 36 percent from the previous year in 2012, and participation in the Electronic Prescribing (eRx) Incentive Program went up 22 percent.

In a move that may, depending on your perspective, either improve current hospital rating systems or create greater confusion, the Leapfrog Group, the leading non-profit hospital quality surveyor, and Castlight Health, a leading provider of cloud-based software for healthcare data, are partnering on a “consumer-friendly” analysis of nationwide hospital performance.

In a set of eight draft recommendations, the National Quality Foundation (NQF) addresses the concern that reimbursement models tied to outcome measures may unfairly penalize health systems serving greater numbers of poor patients.

A research study aimed at uncovering why poorer patients tend to have worse treatment outcomes finds that the quality of the hospitals serving poor communities may be a bigger factor than socioeconomic status in determining mortality risk after cancer surgery.

It’s all about aligning “the right information with the right people at the right time,” said HIMSS Executive Vice President Carla Smith in her closing message to attendees of the HIMSS14 Annual Conference & Exhibition.

How many patients per R.N. is ideal is a complicated hospital management question with conflicting research support. A new European study may further muddy the waters.