Editor's Note In this study led by Martin A. Makary, MD, MPH, professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, minimally invasive surgery (MIS) was associated with better outcomes than open procedures in the Medicare population. Of 233,984 Medicare patients who had one of seven common surgical…
Editor's Note A Frost & Sullivan analysis shows adverse patient safety events will cost the US and western Europe $383.7 billion by 2022, the February 26 Becker’s Clinical Leadership & Infection Control reports. These adverse events will lead to an estimated 91.8 million patient hospital admissions and about 1.95 million…
Editor's Note The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) on March 2 issued a warning for healthcare professionals not to use drug products produced by Cantrell Drug Company (Little Rock, Arkansas), including opioids and other drugs intended for sterile injections. The FDA is concerned about serious deficiencies in Cantrell’s compounding operations,…
Editor's Note Using a multimodal approach to pain management was associated with decreased opioid use, opioid prescriptions, and opioid complications in total joint replacement patients in this study. Of 512,393 hip replacement and 1,028,069 knee replacement patients analyzed, multimodal pain management techniques were used in 85.6% during surgery, on the…
Editor's Note The Joint Commission on February 28 announced the update of its sentinel event statistics for 2017. Of 805 reports reviewed, the Top 10 events most frequently reported included: unintended retention of a foreign body−116 events (first place) wrong-patient, wrong-site, wrong-procedure−95 events (third place) medication error−32 events (eighth place)…
Editor's Note Total hip arthroplasty (THA) is not only associated with improved quality of life but with increased life expectancy, this Swedish study finds. Of 131,808 patients having THA from 1999 to 2012, survival was 1% better in the first year than those who did not have surgery. Survival increased…
Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on February 22 issued a Safety Alert for clarithromycin (Biaxin) because of the potential increased risk of heart problems or death associated with this antibiotic in patients with heart disease. A large clinical trial with 10-year follow-up found an unexpected increase in…
Editor's Note Using financial data from California’s short-term and specialty hospitals from FY 2005 to FY 2014, researchers from the UCLA School of Medicine provide the first standardized estimates of OR costs. The analysis, which focused on two revenue centers--surgery/recovery and ambulatory surgery--found that the mean cost of OR time…
Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is notifying eligible hospitals and critical access hospitals that they now have until March 16 to attest for Medicare Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Program requirements for CY 2017 and to submit electronic clinical quality measure (eCQM) data for the…
Editor's Note The Food & Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), American Society for Microbiology, along with other experts on February 26 released voluntary standardized protocols for duodenoscope surveillance sampling and culturing, which update a 2015 CDC interim protocol. For facilities that choose to implement duodenoscope surveillance…
