OASIS Alert

Follow these leads to save effort and money.

The focus on OASIS items proposed to be included in the P4P demo is beginning. But it's unlikely you will need to start from scratch. Instead, look through these helpful Web sites that offer ready-to-use material.

Learn From Hospitals' 5 Million Lives Campaign

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement on Dec. 12, 2006 launched a national campaign to dramatically reduce incidents of medical harm in U.S. hospitals. The 5 Million Lives Campaign -- which will last until Dec. 9, 2008 -- plans to build on the success of the eighteen-month-long 100,000 Lives Campaign, IHI says.

Several of the targeted interventions are similar to those being addressed by home health agencies: reducing adverse drug reactions, preventing postoperative infections, avoiding pressure ulcers and preventing central line infections.
 
As part of the campaign, IHI has provided a Web site with materials you can download for free to help you get stared in improving the quality of patient care. These resources include how-to guides, annotated bibliographies, recordings of informational calls, tools, success stories and links to other useful Web sites.

Example: A how-to guide for preventing pressure ulcers reviews basic pressure ulcer information, discusses six "essential elements" of pressure ulcer prevention and explores actions and changes that can address each of these elements. The accompanying bibliography lists and summarizes 26 resources on pressure ulcers.

This material is at www.ihi.org/IHI/Programs/Campaign/Campaign.htm?TabId=2#InterventionMaterials.

Medqic Offers Tool, Links, Success Stories and More
 
The Medicare Quality Improvement Community provides a wealth of information. The home health page on the Web Site includes a clinical resource kit for acute care hospitalization, links to presentations on many topics and information on performance measures.

Select the "Tools" link on the home health page, to download tools for everything from acute care hospitalization to improving dyspnea, pain management or surgical wounds. A variety of scales, charts and patient handouts on crucial home health topics will make your quality improvement efforts much easier.

Example: Users have given a five-star rating to the home telehealth disease management series ...quot; a package of tools to improve the management of heart failure, diabetes, cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Medqic's extensive resources are at www.medqic.org/dcs/ContentServer?pagename=Medqic/MQPage/Homepage. Select "Home Health" from the menu bar across the top of the page.