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The Joint Commission's proposed 2009 National Patient Safety Goals include the following new emphasis on infection prevention:
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Surprising research results which have been widely misinterpreted as evidence that hand hygiene has little impact on infection rates more likely reveal that health care infections (HAIs) arise from complex causes and cannot be prevented by a single intervention, the author tells Hospital Infection Control.
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A decision by a federal agency to halt a landmark infection prevention effort continues to create fallout, with the American Hospital Association (AHA) issuing a strongly worded letter protesting the move.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is drafting comprehensive new guidelines for urinary tract infections (UTIs), a complication so common and typically treatable that it has been accepted with a sort of benign neglect by the health care system.
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Following the deaths of two patients at specialty hospitals owned by physicians in both cases, the patients suffered complications following surgery, no physician was on duty, and the specialty hospitals called 9-1-1 to respond the Senate Finance Committee asked the Office of Inspector General (OIG) to evaluate patient care at 109 physician-owned specialty hospitals in the United States, and the OIG report, released in January, has raised concerns for patient safety.
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The U.S. Veterans Health Administration (VA) National Center for Ethics in Health Care launched a major ethics integration initiative in 2007, including a new component that seeks to standardize and evaluate the quality of ethics consultations.
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Increased emphasis on patients at risk for postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV), enhanced information on anesthesia for pediatric patients, and focus on post-discharge PONV are three significant changes in the Society for Ambulatory Anesthesia Guidelines for the Management of Postoperative Nausea and Vomiting.
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The Massachusetts Hospital Association recently announced that all Massachusetts hospitals are adopting a uniform policy to not charge patients or insurers for certain serious adverse events, including wrong-site surgeries, as defined by the National Quality Forum (NQF). In doing so, Massachusetts becomes only the second state in the nation to take this voluntary action.
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Patients with limited arthritis in their knees typically had to live with pain and discomfort or wait until deterioration reached a point at which they could undergo a total knee replacement, but new technology gives patients a third option that allows them to return to normal activity without pain earlier in their lives.
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Although mastectomies have been performed in outpatient surgery programs for several years, skepticism about the safety of outpatient mastectomies with immediate reconstruction has kept some physicians from letting patients know about the option, say experts interviewed by Same-Day Surgery.
