Public health is trapped in an inverse relationship. It supports many needs with few resources. A 2022 report from The Commonwealth Fund found that the U.S. spends twice as much on healthcare than the average, high-income country. In addition, we spend more on healthcare treatment and less on prevention, a primary focus of public health. Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, states , “[W]e don’t do as much primary care prevention as the other nations, and we still have a public health system, which is fractured . . . [We also] under-invest compared to other industrialized nations in societal things. They spend their money on providing upfront support for their citizens. We spend our money on sick care.” If you work in a health department with a large underserved population, you are more aware than most of these realities. You may not be as sure, however, of the best way to meet critical community needs with limited available resources. The...

A new data remediation project was discussed at a May 17 DOH forum for all providers that submit data to the Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System. SPARCS plans to go back through data submitted for inpatient and emergency department cases since 2016 and validate that the injury, cause and place settings are complete and accurate, as required by the guidelines released at the end of April. DOH said that in the next two weeks, it will generate a list of claims that need reconciliation. Each hospital will need to go through records from 2016 to the present and update them to meet the new SPARCS requirements. The requirements are contingent for each year, meaning 2016 has its own set of data, 2017 has its own set, etc. Hospitals eagerly await details, as a remediation project like this could pose many challenges. Some hospitals have changed billing systems and, as a result, may not have access to records that far back. In addition, the medical record notes may not have comple...

Survey results are meaningless without actionable insights. And when the highest levels of quality care and accreditation are on the line, actionable survey results are an absolute must for your hospital. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Surveys on Patient Safety Culture™ (SOPS®) suggests you collect the right data from the right people at the right time. Response rates must be high and survey answers meaningful. But these recommendations make SOPS a resource-heavy project. Cumbersome and time-consuming, key insights can be overlooked, and it can be hard to develop action plans to enhance patient and worker safety efforts, especially across two-year survey intervals. It doesn’t have to be that way. Start your SOPS process off right with these tips, including support from the right survey administration partner: DataGen . 1. Make strong, early survey decisions. AHRQ states a 60% response rate is required to obtain an accurate representation of the culture of safety in yo...

Did you notice a large rejection rate when submitting your Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System data this month? That’s because the New York State Department of Health quietly released an updated SPARCS data set for injury, cause and place codes on April 27 – just four days before the month’s end. More than 10,000 diagnosis codes require a cause of injury. These new updates add a dozen additional diagnosis codes with this requirement. There are more than 2,200 cause of injury codes that require a place. The updated SPARCS dataset added a couple hundred to that. If your team submitted SPARCS data for the end of the month, your SPARCS coordinator is likely making a lot of adjustments to fix the rejections. With DataGen’s UDS platform, your team wouldn’t be bogged down with SPARCS rejections. Our web-based software automates formatting, syncing, error sweeping and submission to SPARCS . That includes the pesky rejections resulting from the updated injury, cause and place co...

Everybody knows: Conferences aren’t just about what you learn but who you meet. Anyone attending the annual National Association of ACOs conference this week in Baltimore should take full advantage of the experts in attendance. This will include executives from leading accountable care organizations, private payers and CMS. NAACOS 2023 will zero in on what you need to know now and who best to learn it from. That includes the industry partners who have helped build incentive-generating infrastructure for the past decade’s most successful ACOs. Analytics first, last and everywhere If there’s any question as to what ACOs need to succeed with alternative payment models, simply look at the topic of NAACOS’ opening session: advanced analytics. There isn’t a single aspect of value-based care that doesn’t happen without analytics: better prevention and primary care; enhanced care coordination; managing risk; benchmarking; and a stronger bottom line. NAACOS sessions will detail these topics wi...