Editor's Note Flooding from Hurricane Harvey is pushing some Houston hospitals to close or evacuate, the August 27 Modern Healthcare reports. Baylor College of Medicine and clinics closed Sunday, August 27, as did all Texas Children’s Hospital’s pediatrics practices and urgent care locations. The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer…
Editor's Note Results of a new national survey by the Hartford Consensus about views of the public and healthcare professionals on active shooter events in hospitals show that: 61% of the public and 62% of professionals believe physicians and nurses have a special duty to protect patients during an active…
Editor's Note Using a new blood clot strength test based on a modified thrombelastography (TEG) assay with exogenous tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), researchers at the University of Colorado, Denver, were quickly able to assess the overall ability of blood to clot and identify trauma patients in need of a massive…
Editor's Note Training surgeons in bleeding control techniques so they can, in turn, teach the general public is an effective way to disseminate bleeding control knowledge and skills, finds this study. Of 341 surgeons who were trained and surveyed at the 2016 American College of Surgeons (ACS) Congress, 93.79% agreed…
Editor's Note An 8-minute module can be deployed in clinical and nonclinical settings to train a large workforce in hemorrhage control, this study finds. In response to active shooter and mass casualty incidents, researchers at UnityPoint Health, Des Moines, Iowa, wanted to see if they could take important information from…
Editor's Note The American College of Surgeons (ACS) and the Hartford Consensus on September 16 announced the launch of a new website designed to assist the public and first responders in the event of a mass casualty or other bleeding control emergency. The website, BleedingControl.org, contains diagrams, videos, and other…
Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on September 16 released its final rule on “Emergency preparedness requirements for Medicare and Medicaid participating providers and suppliers.” The rule establishes requirements to plan for natural and man-made disasters and coordinate with federal, state, tribal, regional, and local emergency…
It was shortly after 2 am on Sunday, June 12. Ambulances, trucks, and cars started arriving at Orlando Regional Medical Center (ORMC) loaded with shooting victims from a terrorist attack at the Pulse nightclub. Because ORMC was just a couple of blocks from the nightclub, first responders loaded multiple victims…
Terrorist incidents are increasingly frequent, and most US healthcare facilities have established mass casualty protocols to make sure they are prepared. Although treating large numbers of injured patients simultaneously is still the exception rather than the rule, many urban facilities regularly receive gunshot victims. A recent example of receiving multiple…
Healthcare facilities are places of healing. Sometimes they also can be places of danger and death—just like the rest of the world. When an ambulatory surgery center (ASC) became the site of a fatal stabbing 3 years ago, outpatient surgery leapt into the public eye, and not in a good…