Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on August 18 announced in its FAQ guidelines that the 1-year grace period for claims using the ICD-10 code set will end October 1. Healthcare organizations will be required to use the correct degree of specificity when coding claims. Unspecified…
Editor's Note Outpatient surgery for uncomplicated acute appendicitis is feasible, this study finds. A total of 240 patients were divided into intention-to-treat and per protocol (ie, no preoperative exclusion criteria) groups. There was also a subgroup of patients who were discharged to home the day before surgery. The success rate…
Editor's Note In children undergoing staged reconstructive surgery for hypoplastic left heart syndrome, increasing cumulative exposure to volatile anesthetic agents beginning in infancy was associated with worse performance on IQ scores between ages 4 and 5, this study finds. This is the first study to link neurodevelopment outcomes with cardiac…
Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on August 19 announced the recall by Sagent Pharmaceuticals, Inc (Schaumburg, Illinois), of one lot of Oxacillin for Injection, USP, 10 g (NDC 25021-163-99) Lot OXT512 (Exp Date March 2017). The recall was initiated because of a user complaint of a vial…
Editor's Note Implementation of a telephone postoperative clinic significantly improved utilization of surgeon and facility resources while maintaining patient outcomes, this study finds. Of 200 patients included in the study, 29 had in-person postoperative follow-up and 171 had telephone follow-up. There was no difference in rates of emergency department visits…
Editor's Note The addition of race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status to the risk-adjusted algorithm for readmissions after total hips and knees used by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services led to a relative-performance change in readmission rates of <3% of 1,194 hospitals in this study. Policy makers and payers should…
Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on August 17 issued a Safety Alert on the System 83 Plus Automated Endoscope Reprocessors by Custom Ultrasonics (Warminster, Pennsylvania), recommending that healthcare facilities stop using them to reprocess duodenoscopes. The system may still be used for reprocessing endoscopes other than duodenoscopes.…
Editor's Note Generation Z is beginning to enter the workforce, and recruiting is not the same as for millennials, the August 14 Fortune.com reports. Like the millennials, many Gen Zers want to do work that has a positive impact on the world, but they are more concerned about job security…
Editor's Note Applying a classification tool to identify process and cognitive errors leading to discrepancies between intraoperative frozen section diagnoses and final pathology reports, researchers found that the rate of discrepancies is small and the source of discrepancies varied between organ systems and specific organs. Of 1,042 frozen sections examined,…
Editor's Note Single-dose antibiotic prophylaxis was associated with fewer peripheral and epidural catheter infections, this study finds. The study included 11,307 regional anesthesia patients with single-dose antibiotic prophylaxis and 11,307 controls who did not receive antibiotics. For peripheral catheters, the incidence of infections without antibiotics was 2.4%, compared with 1.1%…
