Editor's Note The Joint Commission announced December 11 that starting January 1, 2020, it will no longer have contracts with ORYX chart-based vendors for accreditation or certification purposes. Hospitals with advanced certification programs must manually enter their performance measure data into the Certification Measure Information Process (CMIP) app on their…

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Editor's Note In this study, active cannabis use disorder was linked to an increased risk of postoperative myocardial infarction (MI). Researchers retrospectively analyzed 4,186,622 elective surgery patients in the Nationwide Inpatient Sample. Of 27,206 patients in the propensity-score matched-pairs cohort, there was no statistically significant difference between those with (400…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission announced December 11 that during the appeals process of he United States Pharmacopeia (USP) 797 chapter revisions, it will evaluate organizations based on the version they have adopted−either 2008 or the 2019 revised chapter. Organizations may not independently choose specific components from both versions, but…

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Editor's Note Integrating artificial intelligence (AI) with surgical decision making could transform care by augmenting the decision to perform surgery, informed consent process, identification and mitigation of modifiable risk factors, decisions on postoperative management, and shared decision for resource use, this review finds. Surgical decision making involves hypothetical-deductive reasoning, individual…

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Editor's Note Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas have developed a new software tool that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to recognize cancer cells from digital pathology images, a December 9 UT Southwestern news release reports. The spatial distribution of different types of cells can reveal a cancer’s growth…

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Editor's Note The Center for Fluorescence-Guided Surgery at UC San Diego Health is the first in the country dedicated to delivering a new caliber of surgical accuracy that allows surgeons to identify cancerous or critical tissues with GPS-like precision by lighting them up, the December 5 UC San Diego Health…

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Editor's Note Partners HealthCare, the largest healthcare system in Massachusetts has been renamed Mass General Brigham, the November 27 Boston Business Journal reports. The new name also comes with a new 5-year plan for the 12-hospital system. The Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital are the top two largest…

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Editor's Note Despite high rates of patients discharged with cardioprotective medications, the long-term burden of postoperative myocardial infarction (MI) after major vascular surgery is substantial, with a high mortality rate in the following year, this study finds. Of 26,231 vascular surgery patients analyzed, factors linked to an increased risk of postoperative…

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Editor's Note Employment in US hospitals was up 9,900 jobs in November to a seasonally adjusted 5,283,200, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on December 6. That’s up 94,300 more employees than a year ago. Overall, healthcare employment has increased 414,200 in the past year. The overall unemployment rate fell…

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Editor's Note Bariatric surgery provides more benefits for obese patients than weight loss; it also reverses subclinical heart dysfunction, finds this study presented December 5 at EuroEcho 2019, a scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology in Vienna, Austria. The study included 38 obese patients who had bariatric surgery…

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