Septicemia continues to pose a challenge to hospitals: A statistical brief1 released recently by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality indicates not only that 47.1% of aggregate hospital costs incurred in 2011 were related to the 20 most expensive conditions to treat, but that the top five such conditions, septicemia among them, accounted for nearly a fifth (18.5%) of the total aggregate costs of all hospitalizations. Perhaps it’s even more significant that the brief identifies septicemia as the most expensive condition treated in hospitals in fiscal 2011, with an aggregate cost of $20.3 billion (or 5.2% of the total aggregate cost for all hospitalizations) required to cover its remediation.

With cost containment driving many health-care decisions, the temptation exists for hospital executives to judge a service line on speed and efficiency (and to overlook quality). In a service line such as radiology—for which accuracy is not easily assessed and quality measurements are not consistently reported—the inclination might be even stronger.

A carefully managed electronic data warehouse is a key component of improved patient care in any health-care practice and is surprisingly easy to build on and improve, once you begin the implementation process. Those were the key points of “Use of Registry Tools to Improve Care,” presented by David Howes, MD, in San Diego, California, on October 7, 2013, at the annual conference of the Medical Group Management Association. Howes is president and CEO of Martin's Point® HealthCare (Portland, Maine), a nonprofit health-care organization.

For many years, in health care, patients in the United States got what we all thought was high-quality care: well-trained physicians delivering as much health care as patients wanted, much as restaurants serve food. The value revolution in health care means that care providers can no longer wait for patients to access care: Too many of them access too little care; others overuse it. Clinical analytics, in the hands of caregivers, is proving to be a potent enabler.

The Joint Commission’s Annual Report on Quality and Safety named 1,099 hospitals as achieving a spot on its Top Performer on Key Quality Measures program. These hospitals represent 33 percent of all Joint Commission-accredited hospitals reporting accountability measure performance data for 2012, and include general, children’s, psychiatric, surgical specialty and critical access hospitals, according to the 60-page report.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is seeking public comment on several new clinical quality measures for eligible professionals that pertain to Meaningful Use Stage 3.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) announced three appointments to the Health IT Policy Committee; each will serve three-year terms.

The National ICD-10 Pilot Project helped develop codesets to get providers on track for the new system.