By Matthew Greis | February 04, 2012
| Print Magazine
Hear that? It's the sound of water gently cascading from a decorative fountain in a hospital lobby. But, if the murmur of flowing water is meant to instill a sense of calm among patients, visitors and staff, the reality is far more disquieting. And newsworthy. FULL STORY »
The California Hospital Association hired Dr. David Perrott as senior vice president and chief medical officer to replace Dorel Harms, who recently retired as senior vice president, clinical services. FULL STORY »
New Jersey's state health department has launched a website that allows the public to examine inspection reports for 260 ambulatory surgery centers. FULL STORY »
Birth control pills are known to be nearly 100% effective when taken properly, but a recall of the drugs by Pfizer could send a shudder through women of childbearing age. FULL STORY »
A national employer healthcare group joined several provider advocacy groups in urging hospitals to require their employees to obtain annual influenza vaccinations. FULL STORY »
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is trying to determine how far the Food and Drug Administration took its alleged monitoring and retaliation against employees who raised safety concerns. FULL STORY »
By Maureen McKinney | February 02, 2012
| Basic Web
An increasing number of healthcare-associated infection outbreaks are due to norovirus, an easily spreadable organism whose symptoms include vomiting and fever, according to a study. FULL STORY »
By Gaston Gazette (Gastonia, N.C.) | February 01, 2012
Government documents reveal that it took Gaston Memorial Hospital, Gastonia, N.C., staff some six hours to realize a nurse gave an emergency-room patient insulin instead of potassium. FULL STORY »
Calling it a "painful moment in our history," University of Michigan Health System CEO Dr. Ora Pescovitz wrote in a blog post today that the university has "identified significant problems" with the way it handled an allegation last May that child porn was found at U-M Hospital. FULL STORY »
The Food and Drug Administration said it reached an agreement in principle with the medical device industry to reauthorize the device user-fee program, but has not yet finalized recommendations to submit to Congress. FULL STORY »
Not enough is being done to maintain or enhance the quality of life for Americans with chronic illness as an epidemic of chronic illness heads toward crisis proportions, according to a report from the Institute of Medicine. FULL STORY »
Quantros has named Dr. Gerard Livaudais chief medical officer and senior vice president for content and product management. The Milpitas, Calif.-based company makes Web-based quality and safety applications. FULL STORY »
Nearly half of women who had lumpectomies for breast cancer had second operations they may not have needed because surgeons have been unable to agree on guidelines, a new study finds. FULL STORY »
Safety net hospital emergency departments are not at a disadvantage in terms of meeting the terms of proposed length-of-stay measures for patients both admitted and discharged, a new study says. FULL STORY »
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration secretly monitored the personal e-mail of a group of its own scientists and doctors after they warned Congress that the agency was approving medical devices that they believed posed unacceptable risks to patients, government documents show. FULL STORY »
By New Haven (Conn.) Independent | January 30, 2012
Incidents of pressure ulcers, wrong-site surgeries and other surgical errors reported by Connecticut hospitals have increased in the last five years, despite myriad efforts to curb them, a new state report shows. FULL STORY »
Bugs that cause childhood pneumonia and meningitis have evolved to evade vaccines by swapping bits of their genome with other bacteria, according to a study published Sunday. FULL STORY »
By Maureen McKinney | January 30, 2012
| Basic Web
The number of hospital stays involving C. difficile infections has leveled off after more than tripling since 1993. That's according to newly released data from HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. FULL STORY »
Dr. Mark Chassin, president of the Joint Commission, discusses the federal government's new patient safety initiative, the $1 billion Partnership for Patients program, and how that program dovetails with the work of his organization, the largest private-sector healthcare accreditation body. FULL STORY »
David Daniel, CEO of Lakeland (Fla.) Surgical & Diagnostic Center, won the second annual Healthcare Administrator Award from the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology. Lakeland Surgical reduced its infections to just two, even as its number of procedures grew by more... FULL STORY »
Jeffrey Rivest, president and CEO of the University of Maryland Medical Center, Baltimore, discusses how his hospital has made it onto the Leapfrog Group's top hospitals list in each of the five years that the group has ranked hospitals. The University of Maryland Medical Center and Virginia Mason... FULL STORY »
Gary Kaplan, chairman and CEO, Virginia Mason Health System, Seattle, discusses how his hospital has made it onto the Leapfrog Group's top hospitals list in each of the five years that the group has ranked hospitals. Virginia Mason Health System and the University of Maryland Medical Center,... FULL STORY »
Mortality, length of stay and patient safety. Those are among key clinical measures used in the annual 100 Top Hospitals: National Benchmarks study conducted by Thomson Reuters to recognize high-performance hospitals. But that's only part of the picture. The study also includes financial markers... FULL STORY »
Thomas Priselac, President and CEO of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, talks with Modern Healthcare editor David Burda about patient safety challenges during the American College of Healthcare Executives' 2010 Congress on Healthcare Leadership in Chicago March 20-25. FULL STORY »
I'm responding to your article about the Health Affairs paper that said that one-third of all hospitalized patients at three tertiary hospitals suffered adverse events. FULL STORY »
The Joint Commission is on a confused track. Mark Chassin's study of his organization's quality process measures was interesting to those of us who find “process” measures typically indirect, microfocused and therefore misguided as an approach to improving quality. FULL STORY »
