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It was an eerily familiar scenario: A huge storm barreled through the Gulf of Mexico with New Orleans in its sights. Hospitals began implementing their disaster plans, calling in employees who would remain on duty throughout the storm. Days later, yet another huge storm entered the Gulf, again threatening the region and straining health care resources.
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Surviving Hurricane Katrina was a life-changing experience. It also was a transformational experience for hospitals, which revamped emergency plans and even changed building design.
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At 3 o'clock on a Saturday afternoon in August, an SUV pulled up to the emergency department at SSM DePaul Health Center in St. Louis. A security officer peered in and saw three men covered in a yellowish powder. It looked like anthrax. Their skin was literally blue they were cyanotic and near death.
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BJC HealthCare, a highly respected 13-hospital system in St. Louis, has become the nation's first multihospital system to require influenza vaccinations as "as a condition of employment for all employees, clinical contract workers, and volunteers."
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Hazards faced by sonographers now are addressed in the online safety module, eTool, of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The segment provides possible solutions to musculoskeletal disorder (MSD) risks and suggests equipment that could reduce the hazards.
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Zero needlesticks. That is the goal set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta as one of the Seven Healthcare Safety Challenges. So why did CDC contract with Novartis for prefilled, thimerosal-free syringes that had conventional needles attached? Federal law has required the use of safety-engineered devices for almost eight years.
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The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently announced that a final rule will appear in the Nov. 18, 2008, Federal Register detailing changes to the agency's outpatient ambulatory surgical center (ASC) payment system.
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An unlucky 13 out of every 1,000 inpatients in recently surveyed hospitals were either infected or colonized with Clostridium difficile, a rate that is 6.5 to 20 times higher than previous incidence estimates.
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(Editor's note: The following frequently asked questions were posted on The Joint Commission web site regarding the issue of health care-associated infections and sentinel events. They were marked as most recently reviewed in March 2008.)
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Conducting an inspection in a Las Vegas endoscopy clinic shortly before it became the epicenter of the largest "look-back" patient testing effort in medical history, inspectors for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services saw nothing amiss with needle practices that ultimately led to a nationally publicized hepatitis C outbreak, Hospital Infection Control & Prevention has learned.
