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Gotlieb Memorial Hospital receives "A" Hospital Safety Score

Gotlieb Memorial Hospital, part of Loyola University Medical Center, has received an "A" Hospital Safety Score from The Leapfrog Group, an independent national non-profit run by employers and other large purchasers of health benefits.

13 May 2013

High levels of OR noise can have disruptive effect on surgeon's auditory processing abilities, study finds

Ambient background noise-whether it is the sound of loud surgical equipment, talkative team members, or music-is a patient and surgical safety factor that can affect auditory processing among surgeons and the members of their team in the operating room, according to a new study that appears in the May issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

13 May 2013

Vast majority of U.S. doctors actively use EMR, Accenture survey reveals

The vast majority of U.S. doctors (93 percent) reported actively using electronic medical records in an annual survey by Accenture of 3,700 physicians in eight countries: Australia, Canada, England, France, Germany, Singapore, Spain and the United States.

9 May 2013

Porter Adventist Hospital receives "A" for patient safety

For the second year in a row, which is also the second year that The Leapfrog Group has issued letter grades for hospital safety, Porter Adventist Hospital has earned an "A" for overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors.

9 May 2013

Johns Hopkins study finds that medical interns spend just 12% of time with patients

Medical interns spend just 12 percent of their time examining and talking with patients, and more than 40 percent of their time behind a computer, according to a new Johns Hopkins study that closely followed first-year residents at Baltimore's two large academic medical centers.

24 Apr 2013

$Johns Hopkins researchers find that diagnostic errors accounted for largest fraction of claims$

Johns Hopkins researchers find that diagnostic errors accounted for largest fraction of claims

In reviewing 25 years of U.S. malpractice claim payouts, Johns Hopkins researchers found that diagnostic errors — not surgical mistakes or medication overdoses — accounted for the largest fraction of claims, the most severe patient harm, and the highest total of penalty payouts.

23 Apr 2013

Discussion paper shows sharing health information could help improve health care, reduce costs

Information collected from individual patients at doctor's office and hospital visits could be used to improve health care and reduce costs on a national scale, according to a discussion paper released by the Institute of Medicine.

16 Apr 2013

Research: Reduced duty hours do not affect quality of care

Restructuring work hours for first-year medical residents to accommodate a 2011 duty hour limit of no more than 16 shift hours substantially increases patient handovers, but doesn't significantly affect efficiency and quality of care among medical inpatients, a Vanderbilt University Medical Center study has found.

9 Apr 2013

Viewpoints: A doctor finds father's hospital care frightening; Politicization of science has hurt research funding

Three years ago, on a Friday afternoon, I received a frantic phone call from my mother. My active and healthy father was in the hospital with a suspected stroke. I immediately started driving to New Jersey, where they lived. I knew I had to be there to ensure that my dad would be safe. He had been taken to one of the most dangerous places in the world: a hospital. The story of my dad's three day stay in a major American teaching hospital is remarkably unremarkable (Ashish Jha, 4/5).

6 Apr 2013

Limiting work hours for medical trainees increases the number of patient 'handoff’

Limiting the number of continuous hours worked by medical trainees failed to increase the amount of sleep each intern got per week, but dramatically increased the number of potentially dangerous handoffs of patients from one trainee to another, new research from Johns Hopkins suggests. The reductions in work hours also decreased training time, the researchers found.

26 Mar 2013

State roundup: Conn. bill would require kids behavioral health assessments

A selection of health policy stories from New York, Connecticut, Oregon, Idaho, Georgia, Texas and California.

14 Mar 2013

Roundup: N.J. seeks to recover $10M from adult day care centers after Medicaid bills; Ga. panel to implement provider fee picked; Pa.'s adultBasic in limbo after ruling

A state agency that serves as a watchdog over New Jersey government announced Wednesday that it has found improper billing of Medicaid by five adult day care centers and is asking the centers to pay settlements totaling more than $10 million. The state comptroller's office found that centers were charging the state for caring for patients when they did not receive care in some cases and for providing care that was not needed in others.

7 Mar 2013

Workshop to help physicians and clinicians increase job satisfaction and prevent burnout

On Saturday, May 11, the Center for Mindfulness at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine is hosting a workshop to help physicians and clinicians increase job satisfaction and prevent burnout. The program will show participants how to incorporate the concept of mindfulness into their daily clinical practice with the long-term goal of enhancing patient-centered care and physician well-being through compassionate communication.

4 Mar 2013

State highlights: Mayo seeks Minn. help for Rochester expansion; Texas bill on end-of-life treatment offered; Milwaukee County board considers dropping employee coverage

The Mayo Clinic is proposing more than $5 billion in investments in and around Rochester as part of an ambitious expansion plan to create what the clinic calls a "Destination Medical Center." Included in that plan is a request for more than $500 million in state taxpayer money to help fund infrastructure as the Mayo grows. Mayo claims the plan would create between 35,000 and 45,000 new jobs. Mayo is already Minnesota's largest private employer with 32,000 employees in the state.

1 Feb 2013

State roundup: Texas lawmakers ready health budget

Texas budget writers got a briefing on the state's health care programs Wednesday, and many of the biggest questions focused on how the state can reduce fraud and what to do about ever-increasing health care costs.

1 Feb 2013

Hastings Center Report special report on ethical oversight of learning health care systems

The longstanding ethical framework for protecting human volunteers in medical research needs to be replaced because it is outdated and can impede efforts to improve health care quality, assert leaders in bioethics, medicine, and health policy in two companion articles in a Hastings Center Report special report, "Ethical Oversight of Learning Health Care Systems."

24 Jan 2013

EHR implementation with technical support can improve patient care in small physician practices: Study

The relationship between a physician practice's adoption of electronic health records (EHR) and quality improvements in patient care remains unclear.

7 Jan 2013

Research Roundup: Health law's under-26 coverage 'significantly increased' access to care; Thousands of surgical 'never events' occur each year

The health law allows young adults to remain under their parents' health insurance plans until age 26, raising questions about the law's overall impact on access to care. Researchers used data from two nationally representative surveys to compare young adults who've gained access to dependent coverage to a control group of individuals (ages 26-34) unaffected by the new policy.

21 Dec 2012

Researchers describe how medical and nursing schools could help prevent potentially deadly errors

More than a decade ago, an Institute of Medicine study revealed that preventable medical errors were a leading cause of death, accounting for more fatalities than breast cancer, traffic accidents or AIDS in the United States. Today, the problem of medical errors remains and might even have escalated.

18 Dec 2012

UMHS approach to medical errors and malpractice suits could be used by hospitals nationwide: Study

The University of Michigan Health System doesn't claim to be perfect. But its response to medical errors, near-misses, unexpected clinical problems and unintended outcomes is a model for the nation that other hospitals can and should copy, according to a new paper in a prestigious health care journal.

14 Dec 2012