Know Someone That Could Use Our Services? Earn a Referral Bonus!

You can get $100 referral bonus for referring someone to Direct Difference. You can get another $500 if they sign a contract with us. WOW!

Did you know we provide abstraction services for core measures, non-core measures, registry, OPPE-FPPE, NHSN, peer review, pharmaceutical studies and others? If you know a facility that has ANY data abstraction needs please contact us for more information. All you have to do is respond to this email to get started!

Health IT Update

Report: Health data breaches fall, compromised records jump in 2018

A report from Bitglass showed that although the number of data breaches in the health care sector dropped from 294 in 2017 to 290 in 2018, the number of compromised records rose from 4.7 million to 11.5 million. Hacking and IT incidents accounted for 45.9% of the reported data breaches, and unauthorized access and disclosure exposed 35.9% of the records, according to the report.

Healthcare Dive  (2/27) 

Quality Reporting Center

Missed the SEP-1 Early Management, Severe Sepsis/Septic Shock Webinar on February 26th? Listen to the archived event here .

Need information about the validation process? Listen the archived webinar from February 7th here.

New to Quality Net and need information on navigating pages and reports? Maybe you are not new but need a refresher? View archived webinar here.

American Heart Association GWTG Education Opportunities

Stroke Workshops and Webinars here.

Heart Failure Workshops and Webinars here.

Resuscitation Workshops and Webinars here.

AFIB Workshops and Webinars here .

American College of Cardiology

Updated 2018 Cholesterol Guidelines for Heart Health

Johns Hopkins Medicine physicians and their American Heart Association colleagues released updated clinician guidelines on managing cholesterol as a way to minimize risk for heart attack, stroke and death on Nov. 10, 2018. The guidelines’ authors have provided the following 10 takeaway messages for health care providers read the details here!

Professional Data Portfolio App Provides Clinical Performance Data, Education Tracking

The NCDR Clinical Quality Coach app has been relaunched as the  Professional Data Portfolio app . The revamped app now allows users to track and manage their education requirements with the new education credit tracker system. This app is available for free for physicians participating in the CathPCI Registry and will soon expand to other registries. The Professional Data Portfolio app will continue to help physicians access their clinical performance data and aid participation in clinical practice improvement efforts. The free app can be downloaded on  iTunes  and  Google Play . Learn more a t CVQuality.ACC.org .

US Spends $8.3B On Unnecessary ED Visits For Chronic Diseases

A Premier study found that about 30% of emergency department visits among patients with chronic illnesses probably could have been prevented and handled in a less costly outpatient setting, and those unneeded ED visits amounted to $8.3 billion in additional spending. The findings, based on an analysis of 24 million ED visits at 747 hospitals, showed 60% of those visits involved asthma, diabetes, hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart failure or behavioral health conditions.

Modern Healthcare

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That’s how we make a Direct Difference!