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The hospital discharge planner calls your admission department about a patient for whom the physician ordered home care. Sounds like it is just business as usual, doesn't it? Not if the physician who ordered the home care only saw the patient once, for a brief time, and is never available to sign the plan of care or answer questions about the patient.
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Does instant messaging provide extra security concerns under HIPAA?
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Hospices have had to deal with the periodic nursing shortages for decades, but California arguably has one of the most challenging problems, so a Sunnydale, CA, hospice has developed a nursing retention and recruitment program that tackles the problem with innovative solution.
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Hospice families often need assistance with personal care for their dying loved one, but it's sometimes difficult for hospice staff to determine which patients truly need the help and which would be just as well off without it.
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For hospitals that want to create their own stockpile of Tamiflu as a part of pandemic influenza preparedness, infectious disease expert Michael Osterholm, PhD, MPH, has one comment: "Good luck."
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At BJC Healthcare in St. Louis, people began to amass, seeking prophylaxis against an emerging infection. Some at the hospital had small children in tow. Some had elderly parents with Alzheimer's disease. Some couldn't speak English. Healthy adults were ushered to an area marked with green, pediatrics to yellow, and those with special needs to red.
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Texas has become the first state to require safe patient handling programs in hospitals. That milestone has captured national attention as other states consider their own versions of a safe patient handling mandate.
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A labor and delivery nurse at Northside Hospital in Atlanta went to work with active tuberculosis for about three months, exposing 37 newborns, about 160 other patients, and colleagues. Based on news reports, she was the third nurse in two years to continue to work while having active TB. One nurse in Virginia died of undiagnosed TB.
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Effective tuberculin skin testing relies on the proper administration of the test.
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A new vaccine against H5N1 avian influenza appears to be safe and effective, according to early research results. And health care workers may be among the first candidates for the vaccine, experts say.
