ABQAURP News: February 2022

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services defines a transition of care as the movement of a patient from one setting of care to another. Settings of care may include hospitals, ambulatory primary care practices, ambulatory specialty care practices, long-term care facilities, home health, and rehabilitation facilities. To improve these transitions, our health care system needs strong interdisciplinary care teams to collaborate and establish processes that improve transitions at each level of care within the health care continuum. 

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Delivery of Care: Creating Communication Inroads

The healthcare industry continues to look for ways to improve care delivery, quality of care, and outreach. However, these discussions often fail to consider the challenge of real-world logistics. Without reliable access to care—including vital elements like food, transportation, and pharmacies—vulnerable patients will remain hard pressed to improve their overall quality of health.

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Addressing the MRI and CT Adoption Gap in Cardiovascular Imaging Certification

While nuclear cardiac imaging and echocardiography have been the mainstays of cardiovascular imaging modalities, MRI and CT offer cardiologists additional diagnostic tools that could improve outcomes in patients with heart disease. For example, advances in coronary CT technology allow for novel analyses such as removal of artifacts related to coronary calcification, detailed coronary plaque characterization, and even dynamic myocardial perfusion analysis.

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How Direct Contracting Initiatives Can Help Bring CBOs Into VBC Networks

Providers, payers, community advocates, and the public health sector increasingly recognize that implementing value-based care (VBC) will be difficult without also addressing issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the healthcare ecosystem. Unlike traditional fee-for-service healthcare, VBC is about proactively keeping people healthy rather than engaging in reactive and more costly “sick care.”

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Online Reviews Reveal Patterns of Discrimination in Hospital Setting

Earlier research has shown that discrimination based on minority patients’ race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, or disability generates worse health outcomes. The co-authors of the recently published research article found that Yelp online reviews provide insight into discrimination in the hospital setting that cannot be gleaned from traditional healthcare performance measures such as Hospital Compare.

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