MedStaff Update: October 2016

Transitional Care Reduces Pneumonia Readmissions
A chance meeting at a Design Thinking boot camp inspired Neera Ahuja and Rita Ghatak to test a theory: Can you reduce hospital readmissions for patients with pneumonia if you apply a multi-pronged, transitional care approach to discharge? The results from their six-month pilot were so promising that the program is being expanded to all general medicine patients at risk for readmission. 

Collaborative Grants Awarded to Stanford and Intermountain Investigators
Stanford Medicine and Intermountain Health Care have joined forces, blending their complementary strengths toward a common goal—to transform health care delivery. With the recent awarding of seven collaborative project grants to co-principal investigators at each institution, this burgeoning partnership has taken a major step toward achieving that goal.

Stanford Launches Master of Science Program in Physician Assistant Studies
Recognizing the expanding role of physician assistants (PAs) in the changing health care landscape, Stanford School of Medicine will begin offering a masters of science program in the fall of 2017 to train future clinicians in a team-based care model.

Patient Safety: Lessons Learned
Therapeutic Duplication Errors Identified
A recent finding by a tri-annual Joint Commission survey of Stanford medical records uncovered multiple cases of therapeutic duplication. This practice puts patients at risk for unintended or excessive use of medications and adverse drug reactions.

Featured Guest Contributor
COO James Hereford Discusses the Need for Cost Management
It is clear at this point, even before we close our fiscal year, that we will fall short of our margin target of $208 million. At the end of the month of July, our year-to-date margin was $157 million, and it is unlikely we will make up that amount of margin in the month of August.