Editor's Note The Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) decreased readmissions for targeted procedures, but no association was found for nontargeted procedures in this study. This analysis of 672,135 Medicare patients treated at 2,773 hospitals included 507,663 patients who had total knee or hip arthroplasty procedures (targeted) and 164, 472 who…

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Editor's Note A survey released November 16 by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices found that many healthcare providers do not support the texting of medical orders. Of 778 respondents, which included nurses, pharmacists, physicians and other prescribers, medication/patient safety officers, and quality risk managers, 33% did not believe medical…

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Editor's Note A restrictive blood transfusion strategy (HGB <7.5 g/dL) was equivalent to a liberal strategy (HGB <9.5 g/dL in the OR or ICU and HGB<8.5 g/dL in the non-ICU ward) with regard to mortality and major disability in cardiac surgery patients who had a moderate-to-high risk of death, this…

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Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued a new requirement, effective immediately, that a hospital must have at least two active inpatients at the time of survey, or the survey/resurvey will not be allowed to continue, the Joint Commission reported November 15. The new requirement…

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Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on November 15 announced the recall by Baxter International (Deerfield, Illinois) of one lot of Nexterone (amiodarone HCL) 150 mg/100 mL premixed injection because of the presence of particulate matter. The particulate matter was identified as polyethylene, the primary constituent of the…

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Editor's Note In this study, compassion practices were significantly and negatively associated with nurse emotional exhaustion and positively associated with nurse psychological vitality. Compassion practices were also positively associated with patient perceptions of care and overall patient ratings. Supplemental analysis found that nurse well-being mediates the relationship between compassion practices…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission has selected Chicago-based Apervita’s platform to enable thousands of hospitals with ORYX data reporting requirement to directly submit electronic clinical quality measure (eCQM) data in 2018, the November 14 Healthcare Informatics reports. Since the shift to eCQM data submission began 2 years ago, the Joint…

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Editor's Note A Meddevicetracker analysis expects the global market for robotically assisted surgical devices to see an 11.7% compound annual growth rate, reaching $5.3 billon by 2021, the November 10 Medtech Insight reports The market is being led by Intuitive Surgical’s da Vinci systems, although the analysis predicts more competition…

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Editor's Note Guidelines for stroke treatment currently recommend clot removal within 6 hours of onset. However, a new study led by researchers from Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, finds that clot removal up to 24 hours leads to significantly reduced disability. This international multi-center study randomly assigned 206 stroke…

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Editor's Note Despite the expansion of requirements for electronic clinical quality measure (eCQM) reporting to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, an increased number of Joint Commission accredited hospitals are adopting and reporting eCQMs to drive quality improvement, the Joint Commission reports.  In 2016, 470 accredited hospitals submitted eCQM…

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