Editor's Note Surgeon and Harvard Medical School professor Atul Gawande, MD, has been named CEO of the Boston-based Amazon, JP Morgan Chase, and Berkshire Hathaway healthcare venture, the June 20 Modern Healthcare reports. The companies, which are focused on lowering the cost of care primarily for their nearly 1.2 million…

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Editor's Note This retrospective study of patients undergoing bariatric surgery found that hospitals with the largest reductions in serious postoperative complications had the greatest decrease in Medicare payments. Researchers ranked 562 hospitals (37,329 patients) into quintiles. The top 20% of hospitals had a decrease in average serious complication rate of…

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Editor's Note Increased use of neuraxial anesthesia for total hip and knee patients was linked to lower hospitalization costs in this study. National data on 808,237 total knee and 371,607 total hip replacements were used in the analysis. Multivariable associations were measured between hospital neuraxial anesthesia volume (quartiles) and outcomes…

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Editor's Note This study found no cost benefit to maintaining a fully stocked malignant hyperthermia (MH) cart with a full supply of dantrolene in maternity units, where triggering agents are rarely used. Maintaining an MH cart in every maternity unit in the US would reduce morbidity and mortality costs by…

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Editor's Note The ECRI Institute on April 23 announced the winners of its seventh annual Healthcare Supply Chain Achievement Award, which recognizes hospitals and healthcare systems for their comprehensive and effective use of ECRI Institute’s PriceGuide™ and SELECTplus® supply and capital procurement advisory programs. Eleven winners were selected from nearly…

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Editor's Note Increased revenues had a greater impact than decreased costs in hospitals that became more profitable between 2003 and 2013, finds this Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) study published February 14 online ahead of print in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. In this analysis of 2,824…

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Editor's Note In this study led by Martin A. Makary, MD, MPH, professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, minimally invasive surgery (MIS) was associated with better outcomes than open procedures in the Medicare population. Of 233,984 Medicare patients who had one of seven common surgical…

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Editor's Note A Frost & Sullivan analysis shows adverse patient safety events will cost the US and western Europe $383.7 billion by 2022, the February 26 Becker’s Clinical Leadership & Infection Control reports. These adverse events will lead to an estimated 91.8 million patient hospital admissions and about 1.95 million…

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Editor's Note Using financial data from California’s short-term and specialty hospitals from FY 2005 to FY 2014, researchers from the UCLA School of Medicine provide the first standardized estimates of OR costs. The analysis, which focused on two revenue centers--surgery/recovery and ambulatory surgery--found that the mean cost of OR time…

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Editor's Note Implementation of an enhanced recovery pathway (ERP) for colorectal surgical patients substantially reduced length of stay, total hospital costs, and direct pharmacy costs without increasing complications or readmission rates in this study. The study, which included 160 colorectal patients before ERP was implemented and 146 patients after implementation,…

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