Health. Care. | An Educational Blog

Any kind of medical treatment received outside of a hospital admission is considered ambulatory care, or outpatient care. This category of healthcare is growing very quickly; in fact, it is the fastest growing health care market in the US! Outpatient services are growing in popularity for two main reasons. First, they are less expensive than hospitals, which have much higher overhead costs. The second reason is that medical improvements have made outpatient services far more practical. The quality of home health care through technology and nursing services allow patients who would have had to be in a hospital receive the necessary care at home.

Up to 75% of surgical procedures in the US take place in the more than 5,000 outpatient surgical centers. (There was a 300% increase between 1996 and 2006, the last time a survey was made. More on that in our next post.) Add to this the number of scans, tests, dialysis sessions, chemotherapy treatments, and other procedures and you begin to see the vast numbers of individuals receiving medical care at ambulatory care facilities. As more and more of us choose these outpatient services for increasingly complex procedures, it is all the more important to learn about this critical area of health care.

Nursing responsibilities have changed dramatically over the past decades. While some non-medical tasks have been shifted to other workers, additional administrative responsibilities have been added. As a result, nursing is among the top most stressful jobs in our country, made all the more challenging during the pandemic. What happens when nurses feel pressured by time constraints? What can be done to alleviate this pressure? We will look at options in today's post.

In late January of 2016, the CDC issued a health advisory “urging dialysis providers and facilities to assess and improve infection control practices to stop Hepatitis C virus transmission in patients undergoing hemodialysis.” This advisory was released after an increase in Hepatitis C infections, and the preliminary evidence that transmission from patient to patient had taken place in at least 9 clinics. This advisory brought to mind the issue of infection in other outpatient settings and inspired the topic of this series, “Outpatient Services and Infection Prevention.”

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) uses a Prospective Payment System (PPS) to provide incentives for healthcare providers to be effective and efficient. Much like health maintenance organizations (HMOs), the PPS provides a flat fee for each service, encouraging providers to stay within efficient financial limits. (In contrast, the older fee-for-service model incentivized over-utilization of services.) Each year, CMS releases changes to the PPS, in their efforts to remain flexible to changing medical needs and feedback from patients and providers. Earlier this month, CMS released the final inpatient rule (all 2,087 pages), including a few important changes.

A new trend in hospital design has been popping up: Micro-hospitals. As our nation's health care options grow, incorporating more satellite facilities, ambulatory centers, and specialized hospitals, the need for new, huge acute care hospitals has shifted to smaller models. In today's post, we'll look at the most common description of one of the smallest types of emerging facilities and some possible implications for infection control and prevention.

Few architects have the vantage point brought by a career in healthcare spanning 4 decades. Professional leaders with this kind of experience, in addition to thoughtful reflection, give us a priceless perspective on where we have been, where our past has brought us today, and what our options are for tomorrow. One such leader is Sheila Cahnman, FAIA, FACHA, LEED AP, a healthcare architect who recently shared her thoughts on innovation in healthcare design, both in a published article and a follow-up interview. In today's post, we'll explore how this architect sees the field of healthcare design, a field where when it comes to innovation, we reap what we sow.

A new market for healthcare is experiencing a bit of a boom: Free-standing emergency rooms (FSERs). These facilities provide 24-hour-a-day emergency care, including imaging, trauma, and other services typically associated with a hospital's emergency department. While they attempt to provide a helpful service for the communities they serve, FSERs face a number of challenges, including infection control and prevention. In today's post, we'll explore these facilities and what they offer the healthcare marketplace.

The general public has never been more aware of handwashing, thanks to the COVID pandemic. We all got a glimpse into the world of the healthcare worker as we washed our hands or used hand sanitizer every time we left a store or got home. Healthcare workers live this life daily, with protocols set to remind them to take every handwashing opportunity in an effort to protect patients (and themselves) from disease. In today's post, we will explore how the pandemic impacted hand washing, called hand hygiene, during the pandemic and beyond. Did the pandemic increase or decrease hand hygiene?

There are 6,093 hospitals in the United States. Those facilities can be divided in a variety of categories depending on size, location, demographics, finances, and affiliation. Today's post will explore the various categories into which any given hospital can be assigned. Knowing these categories can help consumers better understand the context of the hospitals from which they have to choose.

Think back to the last time you or a loved one was a patient in a hospital or healthcare facility. What things do you remember most? Is it the stress about health and recovery? Maybe you remember the frustration of trying to get answers or understanding what was going on? Or perhaps you remember a constant worry about whether the hospital was clean enough to prevent an infection? If any or all of these are familiar, you are not alone. A recent study investigated what patients consider the most important aspects of a quality hospital, and as this post will reveal, how infection prevention is their top concern.