Editor's Note The Joint Commission on September 20 posted sentinel event statistics from its database through June 30, 2017. Of the top 10 most frequently reported sentinel events during this time period: Falls topped the list with 49 events. Unintended retention of a foreign object was 3rd with 41 events.…

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Editor's Note In this large multi-site study, bariatric surgery was associated with a lower risk of cancer, particularly obesity-associated cancers, such as postmenopausal breast cancer, endometrial cancer, and colon cancer. The study included five study sites with 22,198 patients who had bariatric surgery and 66,427 nonsurgical matched subjects. At a…

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Editor's Note Research from Spok Inc found 71% of hospitals allow physicians and nurses to use their own electronic devices at work, compared with 58% last year, the September 21 Healthcare Informatics reports. The researchers also found that: 38% of physicians favored having a hospital-issued device, and they use an…

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Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on September 25 categorized the recall by Spectranetics (Colorado Springs, Colorado) of its Bridge Occlusion Balloon Catheter (model 590-001) as Class I, the most serious. The Bridge Occlusion Balloon Catheter is used to temporarily block the superior vena cava when emergency control…

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Editor's Note No single key retention strategy solves the issue of keeping older nurses in the workplace but, rather, a multifaceted approach is necessary, this study finds. An exploratory study was conducted at a 730-bed teaching hospital in northeast Ohio using four focus groups of staff nurses−three groups consisted of…

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Editor's Note SERVICEguide is the ECRI Institute’s new membership-based advisory service that helps hospitals maintain and manage their outsourced services. SERVICEguide includes an interactive assessment dashboard with spend analytics that reveal the highest potential areas for savings. Recently, for example, ECRI Institute helped a large healthcare system save more than…

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Editor's Note An Ambra Health survey found that 31% of more than 1,100 healthcare consumers were not able to easily access their medical records, and only half of those had access to their records online through their health care practitioner, the September 19 Healthcare Informatics reports. The survey also found…

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Editor's Note Private vehicle transport was associated with a significantly lower likelihood of death compared with ground emergency medical services (EMS) transport for patients with gunshot and stab wounds in this study. In this analysis of 103,029 patients in the National Trauma Data Bank, 87.6% were male, 47.9% were black,…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission on September 20 announced the top five most challenging requirements for the first half of 2017. The top five requirements identified most frequently as “not compliant” during surveys and reviews for hospital accreditation were: 86%--LS.02.01.35: The hospital provides and maintains systems for extinguishing fires. 74%--LS.02.01.30:…

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Editor's Note This 12-year study showed long-term durability of weight loss and effective remission and prevention of type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and dyslipidemia after Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery. For the study, 1,156 severely obese patients were divided into three groups: 418 who sought and had Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (surgery group),…

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