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Alarms top safety list again

At press time, ECRI released its annual list of top 10 patient safety issues. At the top again was alarms; something that has been a concern for ECRI over the course of several lists. This time, the issue list focuses on the policies and practices around alarms. Other familiar items on the list include Health IT — a concern to regulators like The Joint Commission, which issued Sentinel Event Alert related to Health IT last month.

Successful sepsis program leads to national award

It has been five years since Martin Doerfler, MD, came to North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System as senior vice president for clinical strategy and development and associate chief medical officer. When he started, the 18-hospital system based in Great Neck, NY, had a sepsis rate that was above the national average. Healthgrades noted the system was “underperforming” in the area. Before he started, sepsis was the largest single contributor to mortality in the health system. They created a task force to try to deal with it, he says.

Medication reconciliation: Make it somebody’s job

Medication reconciliation is so important to the wellbeing of patients that proof it is done is something that is required by accreditors. But who should do it? Is there someone who is best placed to do it? And if there are multiple people who could do it, do any of them know who is doing it?

ICD-10 is finally on the horizon

At a time when the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is putting extreme value on high-quality data, the repeated delays to the implementation of ICD-10 are impeding progress toward that very goal.

Proposed: Eight Stage 3 meaningful use objectives and their measures

The list of proposed Stage 3 meaningful use objectives and their measures.

Stage 3 EHR Meaningful Use Proposals Include Eight Core Goals

Get ready for interoperability, simplified meaningful use measures, and program alignment. These are the highlights of the proposed rule for Stage 3 of the incentive programs — with an estimated $1.6 billion in incentive payments for hospitals.

Smartphone apps are a new frontier for minimal risk studies

Now, entire research studies are being run through a handful of apps, released in mid-March, through the iTunes App Store. These apps consent study participants, determine eligibility of participants, and run study tasks — all without the need for participants to travel to study sites.

MMR and autism: Myth and misinformation

An anti-vaccine movement that has been amplified by the Internet and endorsed by vocal celebrities has created a persistent public fear that the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism in children.

As measles cases head for record case count, employee health must ensure HCW immunity

Amid what could well be another annual record for measles in the post-vaccination era by the end of 2015, employee health professionals must ensure that staff are immunized to avoid the chaos that can ensue when a single undiagnosed case enters a hospital.

Ebola fear and stigma of health care workers echoes early days of AIDS in the 1980s

After the index case of Ebola in the U.S. died and two nurses who treated him in a Dallas hospital became infected, there was an outbreak of irrationality that spread as rapidly as any epidemic.