Hospital
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CMS addresses lower relative humidity in ORs
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has provided information on operating room (OR) relative humidity (RH) for ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) and supplemental information for hospitals and critical access hospitals (CAHs) using the categorical waiver of Life Safety Code (LSC) Anesthetizing Location RH Requirements.
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FDA says to inform patients about risk of endoscopy linked to CRE infections
ERCP (endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography), an upper endoscopy procedure performed on some half a million U.S. patients annually, poses a risk of transmission of practically untreatable carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE).
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Smaller outpatient facilities struggle to achieve regulatory compliance with HIPAA
An outpatient surgery facility gives a research organization a patient’s protected health information (PHI) for recruitment, but it didn’t have the patient’s authorization or a signed waiver of authorization approved by the Institutional Review Board or privacy board.
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Freestanding EDs and urgent care centers as new sources of surgical referrals
One question I’m frequently asked is how to increase referrals to surgeons in the hospital or freestanding ambulatory surgery center (ASC) arenas.
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Serratia outbreak linked to drug diversion
A former nurse at the University of Wisconsin (UW) Hospital and Clinics in Madison, who allegedly diverted pain medication for personal use, might be linked to a cluster of infections among patients in the units where she worked, UW officials say.
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Nationwide focus is growing on issues surrounding injection safety
There is an increasing focus on safe use of needles and vials, which was the subject of a Sentinel Event Alert from The Joint Commission last year, says Vicki Allen, MSN, RN, CIC, infection prevention coordinator at Beaufort (SC) Memorial Hospital.1
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Trail of tears: Fired drug-diverting workers free to find another healthcare facility
A nurse stealing morphine by replacing it with saline in a medication vial might not have realized she was colonized with Serratia marcescens, a gram negative bacteria that would soon find its way into the bloodstreams of a cluster of patients administered the contaminated solution. The insult of denied pain treatment was followed by the injury of infection, which proved fatal in one patient. That scenario is under investigation at a Wisconsin hospital, the latest in a series of outbreaks linked to drug-diverting healthcare workers. (See second story that follows.)
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Adverse Events Can Happen When Staff Try to Maintain Equipment
The incident started with good intentions.
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Common barriers to workplace violence prevention include lack of incident follow-up
Nurses and allied health professionals are at increased risk of workplace violence, and yet there remain challenging barriers to preventing violence in the hospital setting, researchers report.1
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‘Active shooter’ scenario and violence prevention should be on every hospital’s agenda
While nearly every hospital nationwide now has a plan in the event of an Ebola patient, few are prepared for a workplace threat that is becoming all too common: an active shooter or another kind of violent act.