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While The Leapfrog Groups ambitious campaign to improve patient safety in hospitals has sparked national awareness, few hospitals are close to meeting the groups standards for computerized prescriptions, specially trained intensive care unit (ICU) physicians, and volume thresholds for certain high-risk procedures, according to a study released by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC).
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The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in Rockville, MD, has unveiled a clinical decision-support tool for personal digital assistants (PDAs) that is designed to help clinicians deliver evidence-based medicine at the point of care. AHRQs new Pneumonia Severity Index Calculator is an interactive application for Palm Pilots and other PDAs to help physicians decide whether to hospitalize patients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). This is the first of what AHRQ anticipates will be several such clinical decision support tools for PDAs.
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Baptist Hospital in Pensacola, FL, winner of this years Malcolm Baldrige award for quality, has saved $2.56 million in two years as a result of its inpatient management program. The program, developed and operated by Cogent Healthcare Inc., an Irvine, CA-based inpatient management company, also was successful in improving the quality of patient care and in meeting the hospitals standards of patient satisfaction.
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A Six Sigma project at Sewickley (PA) Valley Hospital has achieved dramatic results including 100% compliance in one process in just three short months.
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Given the steady drumbeat for improving patient safety from diverse corners of the QI world, its only logical for quality professionals to use all the tools at their disposal and that includes benchmarking. However, experts warn, while benchmarking can prove extremely valuable in your efforts to boost patient safety, those efforts can be for naught if you arent careful about your decisions concerning what to benchmark, what your goals are, and how you interpret your data.
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Travelers returning from Africa are at risk for having acquired spotted fever rickettsiosis. The diagnosis can be missed if convalescent sera are obtained too early; therefore, convalescent specimens should be obtained at least 28 days after the onset of illness.
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Dr. Robert Gilman convened an important symposium on neurocysticercosis at the annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. During that symposium, Dr. Theodore Nash from NIAID reported on the increasing evidence indicating that calcific neurocysticercosis is not necessarily clinically inactive, but may be a cause of seizures and focal symptoms associated with episodic perilesional edema.
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A new preadmission program at the University of California (UC) Davis Health System is building a stronger link between hospital and physicians office and identifying issues much earlier in the process issues that might affect length of stay (LOS).
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On-line university offers controversial course.
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Federal laws aimed at encouraging drug companies to study how well their products work in children have had the unintended consequence of weakening already vague protections that prevent child research subjects from being exploited, a leading human subjects research advocate claims.
