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Improved ICU Physician Staffing Leads to Better Safety Grade
When Doylestown Hospital in Pennsylvania received a C on the Spring 2016 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade, leaders launched a campaign to improve patient safety. A central tactic was adapting its staffing model to meet Leapfrog’s ICU Physician Staffing criteria.
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Hospital Reduces High Cesarean Delivery Rate to Below Average
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine both recognize cesarean deliveries can save lives, but they advise vaginal deliveries for most pregnancies because the risk is lower than that of cesarean deliveries. The cesarean delivery rate is considered a key indicator of quality and patient safety. Leapfrog reported the average cesarean rate nationwide in 2018 was 26.1%, although the organization set a target of 23.9%.
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Hospital Sharply Reduces CDS Alerts to Address Clinician Concerns
Indiana University Health realized its clinical decision support system was overwhelming clinicians with alerts. Read on to learn how leaders acted to improve the process.
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Tips for Integrating Medication into Clinical Decision Support
An expert explains how hospitals can use clinical decision support to improve care while alleviating clinician frustration.
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Improve Clinical Decision Support to Alleviate Frustration
Clinical decision support (CDS) is meant to improve care quality by providing helpful alerts and advice to the electronic health record user. However, too often the result is an annoying proliferation of pop-ups that only frustrate clinicians. When the CDS system interrupts too much with alerts that are not useful, the result can be counterproductive. Clinicians routinely dismiss alerts. In the process, they may ignore those alerts that are useful, say researchers and hospital leaders.
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Is There Right Ventricular Strain or Acute Pulmonary Embolism?
The ECG in the figure was obtained from a middle-age woman who presented with new dyspnea. Is the T wave inversion in the inferior leads a reflection of right ventricular “strain” from acute pulmonary embolism? If not, what else might cause these ECG findings?
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COVID-19 Vaccine Update
There are dozens of vaccine candidates undergoing investigation in human and animal trials. Only a few have reached Phase III testing. This is a closer look at those.
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Gut Microbiome in Patients at Risk for Parkinson’s Disease
Certain risk factors and prodromal markers of Parkinson’s disease (PD), such as constipation and rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder, are associated with specific bacterial compositions of the gut. However, the value of gut microbiome data to predict the risk of PD development needs further investigation.
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Auditory Startle Response as a Predictor of Recovery from Coma
Preserved habituation of the auditory startle response, performed bedside, indicates intact cortical structures and cortico-cortical white matter tract connections. Preservation of this reaction in patients with unresponsive wakefulness can help distinguish the vegetative state from minimally conscious state and may even predict eventual awakening.
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Oral Calcitonin Gene-Related Peptide Antagonist for Migraine Prevention
Atogepant, an oral calcitonin gene-related peptide antagonist, was shown to be effective and safe for migraine prevention.