Editor's Note Senior surgical residents can safely supervise junior residents performing appendectomies, and training programs should encourage faculty to let senior residents manage operative appendicitis as independently as possible as well as supervise junior residents intraoperatively, this study finds. In this review of 928 appendectomies performed at the University of…

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Editor's Note In this study, experts graded the four major publicly reported hospital quality rating systems on their strengths and weaknesses−most received a C and the highest was a B. The grades were: US News & World Report−B Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Star Ratings−C Leapfrog−C- Healthgrades−D+. The researchers found that…

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Editor's Note Though the annual volume of gastroenterology and gastrointestinal (GI) advanced laparoscopic abdominal surgical procedures is three-fold higher for US News & World Report’s top-ranked hospitals, the volume does not appear to be associated with improved patient outcomes, this study finds. In this analysis of 51,869 abdominal procedures, the…

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Editor's Note Acute and chronic sleep deprivation patterns are common in acute care surgeons and worsen on post-call day 2, finds this study. In this analysis of 1,421 nights for 17 acute care surgeons, the average amount of sleep was 6.54 hours, with 64.8% of sleep patterns categorized as acute…

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Editor's Note The US News & World Report on July 30 released its 2019-2020 Best Hospitals Honor Roll. The top five are: Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore Cleveland Clinic New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia and Cornell, New York City. In the specialty rankings: University of…

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As part of a special series on artificial intelligence (AI), OR Manager is taking a deep dive into the many facets of this new technology and its impact on patient care. In this issue we continue our examination of the challenges related to AI, which began in last month’s issue…

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Editor's Note In this study, researchers developed service- and surgeon-specific statistical models using linear regression and machine learning to predict case-time duration at a large academic medical center. Results showed: The machine-learning algorithm had the highest predictive capability. The surgeon-specific was superior to the service-specific model, with higher accuracies and…

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Editor's Note In this study, overlapping surgery in a tertiary care colorectal surgery practice was found to be safe and not linked to adverse patient outcomes. Of 1,270 patients having inpatient colorectal surgery at the Mayo Clinic, between 2012 and 2015, overlapping surgery occurred in 576 patients. Overall adverse events…

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As part of a special series on artificial intelligence (AI), OR Manager is taking a deep dive into the many facets of this new technology and its impact on patient care. Part 1 and Part 2 of the introduction to AI (May 2019 and June 2019) defined types of AI…

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“What we have right now, quite frankly, in healthcare are islands—visible islands of excellence in a sea of invisible failures, with risk lurking just below the waterline. We need to widen those islands of excellence. We need to connect these islands with more dry land. We need to address these…

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