Robotic-assisted surgery offers many potential advantages, including shorter operative time, less morbidity, and faster patient recovery. But rigorous comparisons with traditional surgical methods and cost-effectiveness analyses are still limited, and the price tag of the robot (in the neighborhood of $1 million) and annual maintenance contract (roughly $150,000) may give…

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Editor's Note Hospitals with the largest reductions in serious complications after bariatric surgery had the greatest decrease in per-patient Medicare payments, this study finds. Analyzing 37,329 Medicare patients undergoing bariatric surgery from 2005 to 2006 and 2013 to 2014, researchers found a strong association between reductions in complications and decreased…

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Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on November 30 announced a final rule that cancels the mandatory hip fracture and cardiac bundled-payment models, which were to begin on January 1, 2018, and implements changes to the Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement (CJR) Model. In the final…

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Editor's Note Increasing OR ventilation rates to improve outcomes and reduce surgical site infections did not provide cleaner air but did increase operating costs in this study. Air quality was measured at different ventilation rates in three ORs. Increasing air change rates did not provide an overall cleaner environment. Significant…

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Editor's Note November 30 is the deadline for critical access hospitals that did not achieve meaningful use for the 2016 reporting period to submit hardship forms to avoid a 2018 payment adjustment, the November 27 AHA News Now reports. Inpatient prospective payment system hospitals that did not achieve meaningful use…

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Editor's Note A study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association found that some electronic health record (EHR) vendors consistently outperform others, the November 27 Becker’s Hospital Review reports. Epic had the highest performance on five of six meaningful use (MU) stage 2 criteria, including view, download, and…

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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 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 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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Session evaluations from the 2017 OR Manager Conference attendees gave uniformly high marks to the keynote speakers. A common theme in many of their presentations was workplace attitudes. They discussed challenges such as converting the disengaged to the highly engaged employee, and fostering a sense of ownership. A workshop on…

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