Nancy Foster

Quality & Patient Safety, Medical Device Safety

Can Collaborative Efforts to Improve Device Design Improve Safety?

The American Hospital Association (AHA) and the Association for Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) brought together a small group composed of hospital and health system leaders, device manufacturers and policy leaders to explore how to make devices safer by design.

Quality & Patient Safety, Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAIs), Workforce, Community Partnerships, Performance improvement, Reducing Healthcare Disparities

AHA Leadership Summit Roundtable: The Future of Health Care Quality

A Quality Leadership Roundtable that took place at the 2022 American Hospital Association Leadership Summit in San Diego. Hosted by the AHA Living Learning Network.

Physician Fee Schedule (PFS)/MACRA/QPP

The MIPS Needs Ongoing Improvement, Not Replacement

The second year of the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) required by the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) began on Jan. 1. Yet last month, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) voted to recommend that Congress repeal the MIPS and replace it with a new “voluntary value program” (VVP). MedPAC suggests that MIPS is burdensome, inequitable, and too complex and thus “cannot succeed.” But is it really time to scrap the MIPS barely one year into implementation?

Would the VVP Work?

Quality & Patient Safety, Advocacy & Public Policy

HACcidental Penalties: Why Hospital-Acquired Condition Penalties Are Not Reliable

Does receiving a penalty under Medicare’s Hospital-Acquired Condition (HAC) program really mean a hospital is a poor performer? An online article published February 16 in the Journal for Healthcare Quality by the AHA and KNG Health Consulting shows that getting a HAC penalty resembles a game of chance for many hospitals, rather than a fair and meaningful determination of their performance in caring for patients with complex health needs.