ABSTRACT
Palliative care is an essential component of care delivery models designed to address healthcare reform mandates. However, even after years of existence, these services continue to be unknown, underutilized, and/or misunderstood. Often only associated with care at the end of life or confused with hospice, interdisciplinary palliative care teams provide medical care coordination for patients' severe, complex, and/or chronic conditions, longer-than-anticipated length of stay, and/or psychosocial difficulties, regardless of age or prognosis. Organizations that are developing population health initiatives should consider pursuing a strategy incorporating palliative care. The palliative care process enhances patient satisfaction, quality of care, and outcomes while reducing costs.
Subject(s)
Diffusion of Innovation , Palliative Care , Cost-Benefit Analysis , Economics, Hospital , Health Care Reform , Medical Staff, Hospital , Palliative Care/economics , Palliative Care/organization & administration , United StatesABSTRACT
Implementing an effective business intelligence (BI) system requires organizationwide preparation and education to allow for meaningful analysis of information. Hospital executives should take steps to ensure that: Staff entering data are proficient in how the data are to be used for decision making, and integration is based on clean data from primary sources of entry. Managers have the business acumen required for effective data analysis. Decision makers understand how multidimensional BI offers new ways of analysis that represent significant improvements over historical approaches using static reporting.
