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Ways to Improve Communication Among Care Teams and Patients/Parents
Provider and patient or family conversations often take place in ICUs and other settings where patients and family members may experience high levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. Communication challenges can contribute to their stress, particularly when the patient is a child, research shows.
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Care Continuum Collaboration Improves Heart Failure Patient Care
A focus on multidisciplinary management of heart failure patients, along with transitional care interventions and integration with post-acute care facilities, can lower 30-day readmission rates for heart failure patients, new research shows.
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Nurse Care Coordinators Are Valuable in Federally Qualified Health Centers
A Federally Qualified Health Center that invested in a registered nurse care coordination program in a primary care setting found the position provided a valuable service and was cost-effective.
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Communication Challenges Affect Discharge Planning
Obstacles to effective care transitions include communication problems, both inside and outside the health system, according to researchers. When providers were asked about their communication concerns, they cited too many methods of communication, a high volume of communication, and challenges communicating with multiple providers and those outside their health system.
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Maternal Health Reaches a Crisis Point in the United States
The number of women dying from pregnancy-related causes in the United States has risen dramatically since 2018. Those numbers may continue to rise sharply as the nation creates more maternity deserts, obstetric staffing shortages, and obstacles to standard maternity care in states that enforce abortion bans and restrictions that affect women experiencing pregnancy crises.
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Lax Infection Control Suspected in Fungal Meningitis Outbreak
Infection control lapses, including the contamination of multidose vials of anesthetic, are suspected in a fungal meningitis outbreak that exposed about 200 American patients who received epidural injections this year in the border town of Matamoros, Mexico.
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Multidose Vials Linked to HCV Spread in Clinic
An outbreak of hepatitis C virus among four patients at a Los Angeles pain clinic in September 2022 likely was caused by improper use of needles and multidose vials of local anesthetic.
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Antibiotic Stewardship Must Overcome Deeply Held Dogma
Antibiotic therapy is steeped in dogma from case-series studies conducted in the 1940s and 1950s, which generated “low-quality” but persistent evidence before the era of widespread clinical trials, Emily Spivak, MD, said at the 2023 conference of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America.
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CMS Ends COVID Shot Mandate for HCWs
On Nov. 4, 2021, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services began requiring healthcare workers to receive at least the initial series of COVID-19 vaccine. After considerable hue and cry — marked by lawsuits and resignations — the requirement was officially rescinded on June 5, 2023.
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APIC Supports Ending CMS Vaccine Mandate
In a letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology supported the end of mandated COVID-19 vaccines for healthcare workers and suggested adding two key hospital infection risks as quality indicators.