Nationally renowned health care quality expert Patrice Spath and her team of contributors offer quality management professionals, nursing directors, case managers, medical directors, and other health services administrators the information they need to achieve measurable quality improvement and cost savings by moving beyond traditional clinical paths. Case studies--written by physicians, nurses, case managers, and quality management professionals from such diverse settings as FirstCare Health, Merit Behavioral Care, Clinton Memorial Home Health, and California Pacific Medical Center--give readers a behind-the-scenes look at how their organizations used a total quality managed environment and a wide variety of quality elements to develop effective initiatives. For those searching for better or new ways to manage patient outcomes, Beyond Clinical Paths is the road to success.
List of Figures and Tables
About the Editor
Contributors
Preface
Chapter 1 : Taking Clinical Quality Improvement Beyond Paths
Part I : Clinical Process Improvement Initiatives
Chapter 2 : Using Performance Measurement as a Quality Improvement Tool
Chapter 3 : Improving Outpatient Care with Clinical Practice Guidelines
Chapter 4 : Reducing Practice Variation in Open Heart Surgeries
Chapter 5 : Creating a Multidisciplinary Disease Management Initiative
Chapter 6 : Integrating Geriatric Evaluation and Management with a Multidisciplinary Care Planning Process
Chapter 7 : Mapping Home Care Services
Chapter 8 : Incorporating Case Management into Home Care
Chapter 9 : Reducing Length of Stay and Improving Outcomes
Part II : Information Technology Solutions
Chapter 10 : Selecting an Automated Case Management and Clinical Path Information System
Chapter 11 : Building a Cost-Efficient Path Variance Database
Chapter 12 : Automating Clinical Pathway Variance Analysis
Chapter 13 : Designing Information Systems for Disease Management
Chapter 14 : Linking Expert Systems to Outcomes Analysis
Index
