Articles Tagged With: COVID-19
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Hybrid IPs: With Autonomy Comes Responsibility
For better or worse, infection control and prevention programs had to reinvent themselves as COVID-19 hit the healthcare system in 2020. Some hospitals went to “hybrid” programs, with staff working both inhouse and from home on a rotating basis.
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Does COVID Vaccination Prevent Car Crashes?
In a large Canadian study, lack of COVID vaccination was associated with an increased incidence of being injured in a car crash.
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Shortage of Nursing Home Beds Prompts Creative Solutions
The nursing home crises of too few beds and not enough staff is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. Case managers, discharge planners, and transition of care leaders need to find alternative solutions that will keep patients safe and avoid unnecessary hospitalizations.
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Hospital-to-Nursing Facility Admissions Plunged for VA Patients from 2020 to 2021
The Veterans Health Administration’s community nursing home program reported a readmission decrease of more than one-third from April 12, 2020, to Dec. 26, 2020, when compared with the same period in 2019, according to the results of a recent study.
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Worker Shortage, Pandemic Make Drug Diversion Easier
Drug diversion can happen quickly as healthcare workers move from one facility to another, enabled by lax reporting systems and hospital disincentives to alert patients and raise liability issues. Diverters may slip through cracks in oversight by medical and nursing boards as they move to other facilities and are lost to follow-up.
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FDA Streamlining COVID-19 Shot to a Single Formula
Conceding the various vaccine doses and multiple boosters have caused considerable confusion, and some degree of pandemic apathy, the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee unanimously voted to simplify and “harmonize” the process by switching to a single vaccine formula to be administered annually for most people.
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Whistleblowers Not Needed for False Claims Act Enforcement
The federal government can detect False Claims Act violations without alert from a whistleblower, a development that could lead to a greater risk of investigations for healthcare organizations. The government is using its own sophisticated data analytics to identify potential False Claims Act cases.
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Time to Review Non-Physician Policies from Pandemic
Pandemic-era rules allowing relaxed licensing and supervision requirements for non-physicians are undergoing revisions, which means healthcare employers may need to review their policies. For example, in 2022, CMS ended its blanket waivers and reinstated federal physician supervision requirements and other restrictions for some facilities.
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ICU Physician Wellness and Coping During the COVID-19 Pandemic
A binational, cross-sectional survey including 431 questionnaires assessing wellness and coping among physicians who worked in the intensive care unit during the COVID-19 pandemic found that physicians experienced moderate intrapandemic moral distress and burnout, yet also experienced moderate professional fulfillment.
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Telemedicine Abortion Services Benefit Rural Women
Telemedicine for medication abortion could greatly improve accessibility to rural women and expand abortion accessibility to an additional 3.5 million reproductive-aged women, according to recent research.