Uncategorized 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, 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…
Editor's Note Frailty was independently associated with postoperative morbidity in patients having common ambulatory general surgery procedures (ie, hernia, breast, thyroid, or parathyroid), this study finds. In this analysis of 140,828 patients in the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program, the relative risk of complications was increased…
Editor's Note The Joint Commission on February 21 announced that it has created specific versions of 19 elements of performance (EPs) for deemed ambulatory surgical centers and specific versions for federally qualified health centers and rural health clinics to improve access in the E-dition. The EPs were added for the Centers…
Editor's Note Dedicated OR teams for a colorectal Enhanced Recovery after Surgery (ERAS) program at Johns Hopkins Hospital led to anesthesia providers becoming more central to the ERAS network, which increased process measure compliance and improved clinical outcomes in this study. Before the dedicated OR teams were instituted, surgeons were…
Editor's Note The Joint Commission on February 14 announced that the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) has launched a new initiative for US hospitals to complete their attestation when renewing their NPDB registrations. The NPDB is a repository of reports on medical malpractice payments and adverse actions related to healthcare…
Editor's Note Because of the impact of several recent natural disasters, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is granting exceptions for Medicare quality reporting requirements to ASCs in affected areas, the February 12 ASCA News reports. Exceptions include: ASCs in two California counties affected by wildfires ASCs located…
Editor's Note The US Congress on February 9 passed a budget deal that will have a significant impact across nearly every sector of the healthcare industry, the March 9 Business Insider reports. Among the initiatives are: $2 billion for the National Institutes of Health $6 billion to combat the opioid…
Editor's Note A real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) sampling method for monitoring reprocessing of colonoscopes was successfully applied in this multicenter Italian study. PCR allowed identification of contaminated (59) and fully reprocessed (52) colonoscopes in 10 endoscopy units with high sensibility (98 %) and specificity (98%), within 3 to 4…
Editor's Note The first exams have been scheduled for the recently launched new credential for infection preventionists in the ambulatory surgery center (ASC) setting−Certified Ambulatory Infection Preventionist (CAIP). The exam will be online at a testing center October 1-31, 2018. Electronic application must be submitted between August 1 and 31.…
