Editor's Note The Joint Commission, on July 12, announced that it is making several changes to its critical access hospital (CAH) elements of performance (EPs) to better align with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Conditions of Participation, effective August 27, 2023. The changes are part of CMS’…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission, on July 5, announced that it had updated its Health Care Equity (HCE) Accreditation Standards & Resource Center and its HCE Certification Resource Center to help organizations meet healthcare equity requirements. New resources in the HCE Accreditation Standards & Resource Center include: the feasibility of…

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Editor's Note This study by nurse researcher Linda H. Aiken, PhD, RN, and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, finds that deliberate actions by management are needed to improve nurse staffing, clinician control over workloads, and work environments. A total of 5,312 physicians and 15,738 nurses at 60 nationally…

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Editor's Note Overall healthcare employment in the US was up in June to a seasonally adjusted 16,844,800 workers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on July 7. That’s up 41,100 since May. Hospital employment also was up by 15,000 jobs. The overall unemployment rate fell in June to 3.7%, for…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission, on July 5, announced that its surveyors will no longer be evaluating compliance with the COVID-19 vaccination requirement for accreditation. The standard will remain in the current manual until the next standards release later this year, The Joint Commission says.

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Editor's Note On June 29, the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a medical advisory alert "warning of a significant, high-risk vulnerability in Medtronic’s Paceart Optima System, which is used to compile and manage patients’ cardiac device data," the American Hospital Association (AHA) July 6 reports. According to CISA,…

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Editor's Note According to a July 6 report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a global outplacement and business and executive coaching firm that examines job cuts by US-based employers, healthcare/products companies and manufacturers, including hospitals, announced 38,279 job cuts in the first half of 2023, which is up by 97%…

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Editor's Note In a June 27 letter, the American Hospital Association (AHA) urged the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “to avoid disrupting healthcare delivery through the unintentional fracturing” of the medical device supply chain with its proposed ethylene oxide (EtO) standards. The EPA proposes: reducing EtO emissions by 80% adding new…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission, on June 28, announced that refreshed Accelerate PI Dashboard Reports containing data through the fourth quarter of 2021 are now available for accredited hospitals and critical access hospitals. The reports come from chart-abstracted and electronic clinical quality measures data reported to The Joint Commission under…

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Editor's Note This study from Harvard Medical School, Boston, and Georgetown University, Washington, DC, finds that hospital compliance with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) 2021 Price Transparency Rule is increasing since financial penalties were enforced. Data from 4,377 acute care hospitals operating in 2021 and 2022 were…

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