Editor's Note The Joint Commission and the American Society for Healthcare Engineering on July 14 launched the new Physical Environment portal. The portal provides online resources and tools to help hospitals improve compliance with the eight most challenging Joint Commission Life Safety and Environment of Care standards. Upcoming education modules…
Editor's Note There are no federal regulations or quality measures that address cell phone use in the OR, but some say the time for clear-cut guidelines has come. They cite errors and lax safety procedures that have resulted from physicians and nurses distracted by cell phone use. But others point…
Editor's Note The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America and the Infectious Diseases Society of America have updated the 2008 Strategies to Prevent Surgical Site Infections in Acute care Hospitals. The evidence-based recommendations include 15 strategies for SSI prevention and a special section on implementation that emphasizes a team-based approach…
Editor's Note The Joint Commission is urging accredited hospitals to share their performance measure solutions in the Core Measure Solution Exchange (CSME). CSME is an interactive, online, peer-to-peer collaborative network where hospitals that have attained excellent performance on core measures, including accountability measures, can share their success stories. To date,…
Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration has issued a draft guidance to describe its premarket regulatory requirements and performance testing needed to support liquid barrier claims for gowns used in health care settings. In the past, a number of terms have been used to refer to gowns intended for…
Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is planning to require more than 800 hospitals in 75 geographic areas to participate in a bundled payments initiative for hip and knee replacements. These procedures are among the most common that Medicare beneficiaries receive, and prices vary significantly across geographic…
Editor's Note Faced with weak demand and falling prices, manufacturers are improving their product warranties and adding cost-sharing guarantees to compensate hospitals if their medical-surgical devices don’t perform as expected, Reuters reports. Among the companies offering the new guarantees are Medtronic, Johnson & Johnson, and St Jude Medical, which have…
Editor's Note This study found that current and former smoking by surgical patients negatively influenced outcomes following major cardiovascular and oncology procedures. Current smokers had higher odds of overall, pulmonary, wound, and septic/shock complications compared with nonsmokers. The odds of having adverse outcomes were significantly lower in former smokers, but…
Editor's Note Mammography for detection of breast cancer does not reduce the number of deaths from the disease and may lead to overdiagnosis, this study finds. Researchers analyzed data of more than 16 million women in 547 countries in 2000 and followed them for 10 years. The results showed a…
Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on July 8 released its proposed rule for the physician fee schedule for CY 2016. Physicians will have a 0.5% overall increase in Medicare reimbursement under the rule, which will be finalized this fall. The rule also calls for reimbursement for…
