Creating a Culture That Puts an End to Sexual Harassment in Healthcare
The behavior is widespread. When Medscape surveyed 6,200 physicians and clinicians in 2018 about sexual harassment incidents over the prior three years, it found 7% of physicians and 11% of nurses, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants had experienced sexual harassment.
Report: Antibiotic Resistance More Prevalent in Device-Associated Infections
The report compiled data from more than 5,600 facilities from 2015 to 2017 and found that resistance was consistently higher for device-associated healthcare-acquired infections than for the same bacteria identified after surgical procedures. The devices studied were those used for a limited time in a hospital setting such as central lines, ventilators, and urinary catheters.
Predicting Flu Season Remains Difficult, but Get Ready for a Doozy
CDC statistics show that the 2018–2019 season broke records, logging in at 21 weeks long, from October 1, 2018 to May 4, 2019. Up to 42 million cases of the flu were reported, resulting in 20 million medical visits, 647,000 hospitalizations, and about 61,000 deaths.
Q&A: The Impact of To Err is Human at 20
Since the report’s initial claim that as many as 98,000 people die annually from medical errors, there have been major strides in changing healthcare organization’s systemic problem, workplace cultures, and improvement processes.
Freestanding Emergency Departments Can Increase Patient Spending
The recent study, which was published in the journal Academic Emergency Medicine, examined freestanding emergency department data collected in Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, and Texas from January 2013 to December 2017. The researchers focused on total spending on emergency care, out‐of‐pocket spending, utilization, and price per visit.
Workplace Violence Legislation Moves Forward
The bill, which passed by a 251-158 vote, ensures that healthcare and social service employers, including hospitals, take specific steps to prevent workplace violence and ensure the safety of patients and workers.
Indiana Hospital: Sterilization Issue Put 1,200 Patients at Risk of Infection
The hospital sent a letter to affected patients, announcing that one of the hospital’s seven surgical instrument sterilization technicians failed to complete one of the steps required in the sterilization process with certain instruments.
Machine Learning and NLP Improve Medication Reconciliation, Patient Safety
In late 2018, KDMC sought to improve patient safety and streamline the medication reconciliation process by automating EHR transcription of critical medication data. The solution KDMC came up with has contributed to increased patient safety and better health outcomes, as well as higher nurse productivity.
Four Initiatives of Patient Experience Success at UnityPoint Health
This year, West Des Moines, Iowa–based UnityPoint Health’s UnityPoint Clinic division achieved a top 10% ranking from Press Ganey Associates, a national leader in patient satisfaction surveys.
Use Data Transparency With IC Outcomes to Engage Staff
A non-intensive care nurse takes care of five or six patients at a time. Add a few discharges and admissions, and that nurse will touch more than 20 patients in a workweek. Infection prevention and quality department surveillance and data abstractions are usually deferred by some weeks.