The Affordable Care Act's Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) penalizes hospitals based on excess readmission rates among Medicare beneficiaries. The aim of the program is to reduce readmissions while aligning hospitals' financial incentives with payers' and patients' quality goals. Many evidence-based interventions that reduce readmissions, such as discharge preparation, care coordi...

INTRODUCTION Health professional shortages are a significant issue throughout the USA, particularly in rural communities. Filling nurse vacancies is a costly concern for many critical access hospitals (CAH), which serve as the primary source of health care for rural communities. CAHs and rural communities have strengths and weaknesses that affect their recruitment and retention of rural nurses....

AIM A comprehensive review of the literature was performed to describe the substantive clinical areas of clinical nurse specialist (CNS) practice. BACKGROUND There is lack of understanding about the role of CNSs. Debates over blending CNS and nurse practitioner roles are common, as are questions and uncertainties about new models of advanced practice nursing endorsed by the American Associati...

Proceedings are presented from a research conference to promote nursing research as a basis for policymaking in nursing practice, education, and health care services. The keynote address, by Patricia Jones, describes issues in health care financing in the 1980t and urges researchers to provide the kind of data and guidelines needed to support professional nursing services. The second paper, by ...

Today, healthcare organizations are faced with the growing realization that functional and professional silos within the organization are counter to the provision of efficient and effective patient care and are fertile grounds for errors or sentinel events to occur. The improvement of patient care and prevention of errors require that collaboration among professionals occur at the patient care ...

A worldwide shortage of nurses has been acknowledged by the multidisciplinary Global Advisory Group of the World Health Organization. The shortage is caused by an increased demand for nurses, while fewer people are choosing nursing as a profession and the current nurses worldwide are aging. The shortage applies to nurses in practice as well as the nurse faculty who teach students. The inter-cou...

Due to looming physician shortages and the increase in demand for quality medical care for the newly insured, as well as the aging Baby Boomer population, there has never been a more important time for physicians, administrators, and the public to endorse and develop the role that nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs) will play in the future of medical practice. One way to be...

Patient safety culture is critical to the achievement of patient safety. In 2014, a landmark national study was conducted to investigate patient safety culture in nephrology nurse practice settings. In this secondary analysis of data from that study, we report the status of patient safety culture by primary work unit (chronic hemodialysis unit, acute hemodialysis unit, peritoneal dialysis unit)...