Editor's Note:  Large language models trained to extract patients’ social determinants of health (SDoH) from clinician notes could help to identify patients who need additional support and resources. The findings, from investigators at Mass General Brigham, appeared in the Nature journal Digital Medicine on January 11.  Housing circumstances, employment, access…

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Editor's Note:  Fondoplication and Roux-en-Y gastric bypass are both viable choices for treating gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) in patients with obesity, according to a recent study comparing the two procedures. Results were published December 27 in ScienceDirect. The study was based on a retrospective review of a prospectively maintained quality…

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Editor's Note When it comes to healing, perception matters. A recent study by Harvard researchers found that participants wounds healed more quickly when they believed that time had passed more quickly, regardless of how much time had actually elapsed. Results were published in nature Scientific Reports on December 17. Researchers…

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An estimated 126.6 million Americans are dealing with the impact of a musculoskeletal (MSK) condition, according to a US Bone and Joint Initiative report. That means, one in two adults in the US have gone or will be going through a wide range of hip, knee, shoulder, and/or spine procedures.…

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Emerging from the thick of the pandemic has been tough for OR managers and clinicians, between rampant healthcare industry burnout and other challenges. Yet the winners of this year’s OR Manager leadership awards, presented at the OR Manager Conference, are proving that the right combination of hard work, empathy, and…

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Editor's Note Health record codes that track social, environmental, and economic influences on patient health outcomes are vastly underutilized during screening, according a December 19 EurekAlert! report on research from John Hopkins and the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.   Published in Health Affairs Scholar, the study analyzes the…

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Editor's Note Video laryngoscopy was found to lead to higher intubation success rates over direct laryngoscopy in critically ill adult patients, an August 2023 randomized controlled trial published by the The New England Journal of Medicine shows. The findings were consistent whether they were intubated in an emergency room or…

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Editor's Note Forbes Advisor released a ranking of the best and worst states for healthcare based on 24 metrics and four key categories: healthcare access, outcomes, cost, and quality of hospital care, Forbes October 13 reports. The article also noted that as many as 70% of Americans are unsatisfied with…

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Editor's Note In a ranking of over 3,000 hospitals done by the Lown Institute, a nonprofit and nonpartisan think tank in Needham, Massachusetts, researchers found that while inclusion is being prioritized at some hospitals, segregated healthcare markets remain in cities like New Orleans, St. Louis, and Detroit.  The findings were…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission, on August 16, announced a strategic affiliation with the National Quality Forum (NQF) in an effort to accelerate improvements across the continuum of patient care and change the focus from competing measures to advancing key outcomes. The NQF will maintain its independence in developing consensus-based…

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