Editor's Note Long sleeved surgical jackets and bouffant head covers are neither beneficial nor cost-effective in preventing surgical site infections (SSIs), this study finds. A total of 34,042 inpatient surgical procedures performed at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital were analyzed during three periods between January 2017 and October…

Read More

Editor's Note The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Stephen Hahn says there have been no drug or medical device shortages reported in the US so far amid the coronavirus outbreak, but the situation remains fluid, the February 7 Politico reports. The FDA has pulled its inspectors from China, and…

Read More

Editor's Note A new HCA Healthcare survey finds that in the past 4 years Millennials and Gen Z nurses have gone from being the minority to now being the majority in the employee population, and their professional priorities and expectations differ from past generations, according to a February 11 report…

Read More

Editor's Note Employment in US hospitals was up 9,700 jobs in January to a seasonally adjusted 5,252,800, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on February 7. That’s up 88,500 more employees than a year ago. Overall, healthcare employment has increased to a seasonally adjusted 360,700 in the past year. The…

Read More

Editor's Note The Joint commission on January 29 announced a new R3 report detailing changes to the Advanced Certification for Total Hip and Total Knee Replacement program. Effective July 1, there will be 11 new and 11 revised elements of performance (EPs) that will be applicable to all accredited ambulatory…

Read More

Editor's Note Medicare may be overpaying surgeons for postoperative care they provide to patients, according to a new Rand Corporation analysis in the January 23 New England Journal of Medicine. The authors of the analysis suggest that federal officials should incorporate ways to more objectively measure the amount of postoperative…

Read More

Editor's Note In this article, the American College of Surgeons and the Johns Hopkins Medicine Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, which launched the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Safety Program for Improving Surgical Care and Recovery (ISCR) in 2016, announce that they are expanding the scope…

Read More

Editor's Note A virtual system for in-home physical therapy (PT) provided similar patient outcomes after total knee arthroplasty (TKA), with lower costs than traditional in-person PT, finds this study. A total of 306 TKA patients were randomly assigned to have traditional PT, either at home or at clinic visits, or…

Read More

Editor's Note This study from the division of cardiology at Dallas’ University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and the Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, challenges concerns about Medicare’s Hospital Readmission Reduction Program (HRRP)--ie, that it leaves patients more vulnerable and increases postdischarge mortality rates. Analyzing inpatient and outpatient…

Read More

Editor's Note This study finds that robotic surgery increased dramatically from 2012 to 2018 and has diffused widely across a broad range of common procedures. This trend was associated with a decrease in the use of open and laparoscopic minimally invasive procedures. In this analysis of 169,404 patients in 73…

Read More