Guides/Reports
American Hospital Association guides and reports for members and the health care field.
The Breadth of Hospital-Acquired Pneumonia: Nonventilated versus Ventilated Patients in Pennsylvania
Considering the evolution of measures designed to prevent nosocomial pneumonia, it makes clinical and financial sense to focus efforts on patients who require mechanical ventilation. Patients at risk for ventilator-associated pneumonia are easily identified because they require an endotracheal tube…
A loading dose is an initial dose of medication administered to rapidly achieve therapeutic levels. The determination of a loading dose can be complicated, involving calculations dependent upon patient characteristics. This, combined with the need to also administer maintenance doses, creates…
There is widespread agreement that the current fee-for-service approach to paying for health care is problematic, since it incentivizes volume over value, but there is a lack of consensus on what should replace it.
America's health care system has become too complex and costly to continue business as usual, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine. Inefficiencies, an overwhelming amount of data, and other economic and quality barriers hinder progress in improving health and threaten the nation…
The goal of this guide is to help hospital leaders better understand how to address the issue of patient safety for limited-English-proficient and culturally diverse patients. The guide can help hospital leaders:
This toolkit presents Muskegon County's Community Health Needs Assessment process and results, as well as a toolkit that can be applied for other communities' assessments.
Objective: Rates of venous thromboembolism as high as 58 percent have been reported after trauma, but there is no widely accepted screening protocol. If Medicare adds venous thromboembolism to the list of 'preventable complications,' they will no longer reimburse for treatment, which could have…
This discussion paper analyzes factors that attribute to better outcomes at lower costs. The authors have compiled a checklist that addresses: Foundational elements; Infrastructure fundamentals; Care delivery priorities; and Reliability and feedback. Each section is illustrated with case studies…
The results from a 32-month long national collaborative, Expecting Success: Excellence in Cardiac Care show that collection of self-reported patient data on race, ethnicity, and language can be applied with quality improvement techniques to benefit cardiovascular care outcomes for minority patients…