Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on April 10 notified healthcare facilities that Custom Ultrasonics (Ivyland, Pennsylvania) has completed validation testing of the System 83 Plus (ie, System 83 Plus, System 83 Plus 2, and System 83 Plus 9) automated endoscope reprocessors (AERs) with specific duodenoscopes. The FDA…

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Editor's Note Spinal anesthesia was associated with lower mortality and morbidity rates after hip fracture repair than general anesthesia in this study that will be presented Saturday April 19 at the 2018 World Congress on Regional Anesthesia & Pain Medicine in New York City. In this analysis of 2,591 patients,…

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Editor's Note The ECRI Institute and the Partnership for Health IT Patient Safety (ie, a multistakeholder collaborative convened and operated by the ECRI Institute) announced April 10 the new INsight® Culture of Safety Assessment for Health IT Companies. The new program allows health IT developers to assess safety culture with…

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Editor's Note The use of nonopioid analgesics intraoperatively was one of eight factors found to predict postoperative pain in the first 24 hours after spine surgery, finds this study that will be presented Saturday April 21 at the 2018 World Congress on Regional Anesthesia & Pain Medicine in New York…

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Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on April 9 issued the Health and Human Services Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters for 2019 final rule. CMS says the rule will mitigate the harmful effects of Obamacare and empower states to relax the rules on what insurers…

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Editor's Note All eligible Medicare-certified ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) that want to avoid future penalties must complete a new electronic form by April 14 via the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Healthcare Safety Network website in order to report on ASC-8: Influenza Vaccination Coverage among Healthcare Personnel, the Ambulatory…

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Editor's Note Though still underused, this study found civilian prehospital tourniquet application tied to a six-fold reduction in mortality in peripheral vascular injuries. The Texas Tourniquet Study Group analyzed 1,026 patients with vascular injuries of the arms or legs admitted to 11 Level I trauma centers in Texas from 2011…

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Editor's Note Joint Commission president Mark R. Chassin, MD, FACP, says he doesn’t want healthcare organizations to just imagine a day of zero harm, he wants them to achieve it, the Joint Commission announced on April 4. Dr Chassin talked about “Leading the Way to Zero” in an article for…

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Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration announced that new data elements will be available on AccessGUDID, in the download files and in the APIs, as of April 2. Data for FDA Premarket Submission Number and FDA Premarket Supplement Number will not be provided until this summer. The FDA is…

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Editor's Note The poor design of electronic health records (EHRs) poses challenges for primary care practices to generate the required reports for federal value-based payment programs, this study finds. An analysis of survey responses from 1,492 practices in 12 states, found that the reports generated for meaningful-use participation, which requires…

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