Editor's Note Nearly 100 house and senate staff attended a January 30 briefing on the Safety from Violence for Healthcare Employees (SAVE) Act, a bill under congressional consideration that aims to protect healthcare workers from assault or intimidation while on the job. In addition to criminalizing these acts, the bill…

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Editor's Note Large healthcare systems considering a centralized Value Analysis Committee (VAC) model potentially have much to learn from a 10-hospital organization operating in the Washington, DC and Maryland region. MedStar Health System’s still-ongoing transition from multiple, facility-based improvement committees is the subject of one of the first posters to…

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Editor's Note If you can’t join us in Phoenix for this year’s OR Business Management Conference (ORBMC), we’ve got you covered. This week, newsletter subscribers will enjoy exclusive access to coverage of select sessions from the 12th annual event, hosted today through Thursday at The Renaissance Phoenix Glendale Hotel &…

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Editor's Note In an era of social media channels, video sharing, and other new communication methods, traditional verbal or written communication between clinician and patient is inadequate for combating health misinformation, according to the Penn Medical Communication Research Institute. Published December 7 in Jama Network, the researchers’ findings emphasize the…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission has released revised requirements for the advanced disease-specific care certification for total hip and total knee replacement (THKR). The requirements, which are designed to align with the updated AAOS clinical practice guidelines, go into effect July 1, 2024 and focus largely on addressing opioids and…

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Editor's Note Although ChatGPT has shown human-level performance on several professional and academic benchmarks, a recent study of its potential for clinical applications raised questions among surgeon evaluators. Findings were reported in the journal Surgery on January 20. Specifically, researchers tested OpenAI’s general-purpose large-language model on questions from the Surgical…

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Editor's Note Chief Nursing Officers should reestablish academic partnerships in order to strengthen pipelines into the nursing industry that were fractured during the COVID-19 pandemic, according a January 29 analysis in Health Leaders Media. As the healthcare industry nationwide struggles with inadequate staffing, widespread nurse burnout, and many veteran nurses…

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Editor's Note The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on January 24 updated its safety recall communication from November 6 to add to the voluntary recalls of saline and sterile water medical products associated with Nurse Assist, LLC. The FDA recall notice lists various water-based medical products manufactured by Nurse…

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Editor's Note The US government's sale of the Federal Helium Reserve, a large underground helium stockpile in Amarillo, Texas, has raised concerns about the supply of helium for critical healthcare applications, especially MRI machines, NBC News reported January 25. The Federal Helium Reserve reportedly provides up to 30% of the…

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Editor's Note:  Preoperative thyroid hormone replacement independently predicts operative morbidity and length of stay following major abdominal surgery, according to a January 23 report in the American Journal of Surgery. To determine the association between preoperative thyroid hormone replacement and complications following major abdominal surgery, researchers performed a retrospective case…

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