Editor's Note The Joint Commission on July 18 announced that it will implement several standards changes for fluoroscopy services in ambulatory care organizations, critical access hospitals, hospitals, and office-based surgery practices, effective January 1, 2019. The revisions clarify expectations and address areas of risk with imaging, and they include a…

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Editor's Note Lowering the default number of opioid pills prescribed in an electronic health record (EHR) system is a simple, effective, inexpensive, and potentially scalable intervention to change prescriber behavior and decrease the amount of opioids prescribed postoperatively, finds this study. In this analysis of 1,447 procedures before the default…

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Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on July 19 finalized its guidance for using electronic health record (EHR) data in FDA-regulated clinical studies. The guidance is meant to encourage the use of EHR data in clinical studies and promote greater interoperability between EHR and electronic data capture systems.…

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Editor's Note When recruiting Generations X and Y candidates for nursing administration roles, interventions supporting work-life harmony should be emphasized, this study finds. Respondents to a survey, which examined the impact of a set of interventions on recruiting nurses into administrative roles, indicated that 45% of the interventions had a…

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Editor's Note ECRI Institute announced July 17 that it will continue providing services of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ’s) National Guideline Clearinghouse (NCG), which was shut down because of lack of funding. The federal government has relied on ECRI Institute to maintain the NCG since its inception…

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Editor's Note Use of postacute care in skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) for total hip replacement (THR) and coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) patients was not associated with changes in readmission rates, in this study. Of 176,994 CABG patients at 804 hospitals and 233,955 THR patients at 1,220 hospitals, SNF use…

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Editor's Note University of Texas engineering students have created a laparoscopic camera cleaner designed like a 7-Eleven Slurpee straw that keeps a camera smudge-free, the July 17 Medical Design & Outsourcing reports. The “ClearCam” device has a scoop-like shape that acts like a squeegee to clean the camera. Surgeons can…

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Editor's Note Preventability of readmissions changes with time, this study finds. Readmissions within the first week after discharge were more likely to be preventable by hospital-based interventions, whereas later readmissions were less likely to be preventable and more amenable to ambulatory and home-based interventions. This analysis of 822 patients readmitted…

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Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on July 12 issued a proposed rule that includes updated payment policies, payment rates, and quality provisions for services furnished under the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule on or after January 1, 2019. Physician fee schedule rates will be updated by…

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Editor's Note Surgeon-reported complications in morbidity and mortality (M&M) conferences and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Patient Safety Indicators (PSIs) are complementary approaches for identifying adverse events and informing quality improvement efforts, this study finds. Of 6,563 surgical hospitalizations analyzed, 647 (9.9%) had at least one complication…

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