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Medicare Surveyors Catch Same Mistakes, Now Issue Harsher Penalties
The types of citations have stayed the same, but the repercussions are more severe. CMS survey trends show the same pattern of mistakes caught by federal surveyors. In response, a new trend has emerged: harsher citations.
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Study Raises Questions About Reimbursement Metrics for DRG-Based Bundled Payments
Researchers examined reimbursement in bundled payment programs in spine surgery and found that providers are reimbursed the same amount for lumbar fusions regardless of several factors that could affect use and costs.
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Streamlined Surgical Trays Can Lead to Time, Money Savings
A surgery center found that efforts to streamline endocrine surgical trays led to faster tray preparation time and saved $31.62 per operation in reprocessing costs. By streamlining trays for a more exact fit with each procedure, the hospital projected a $28,000 annual savings in instrument reprocessing.
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Possible Flaws When Reprocessing Single-Use Items
The FDA allows surgery centers to reprocess some single-use items, following a standardized process. But there are some changing market pressures that shed doubt on whether this efficiency is feasible. There also have been problems when surgery centers perform procedures incorrectly.
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Investigators Find Connections Between Surgical Tool Design, Reuse, and Contamination
After surgical instruments undergo multiple uses and processing cycles, they can become contaminated while sustaining structural damage and collecting biofilm. Researchers found that after using and decontaminating surgical instruments 20 times, neither a manual nor automated cleaning process removed all the patient secretions.
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Reprocessing and Cleaning Breaches Haunt Some ORs
Patients have sued a Colorado hospital over infections that occurred after surgery. The lawsuit follows public notification of an earlier infection breach in surgical instrument sterilization and cleaning.
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Many Teens Do Not Fill ED Prescriptions for STI Treatment
Results from a recent study of U.S. teens ages 13-19 show that when they are prescribed antibiotics for sexually transmitted infections during ED visits, some 60% fail to fill the prescriptions. The findings are a concern for providers, since adolescents represent nearly half of all diagnosed sexually transmitted infections annually.
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The Push Is On to Reduce Pregnancy-Related Deaths
Pregnancy-related death can occur during pregnancy, delivery, and even up to one year after. National health experts are outlining ways to reduce maternal deaths in light of new research indicating that about three out of every five such deaths are preventable.
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Telemedicine May Offer Access Option for Abortion
The TelAbortion study is designed to evaluate the use of telemedicine in providing medication abortion to women who have difficulty accessing abortion clinics.
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Pharmacist-Prescribed Contraception Effective in Oregon
Study findings indicate that in the first two years after the Oregon law went into effect in 2016, pharmacist-prescribed contraception prevented more than 50 unintended pregnancies and saved an estimated $1.6 million in associated taxpayer costs.