Study: Restrictive vs liberal blood transfusion outcomes in cardiac surgery patients
Editor's Note A restrictive blood transfusion strategy (HGB <7.5 g/dL) was equivalent to a liberal strategy (HGB <9.5 g/dL in the OR or ICU and HGB<8.5 g/dL in the non-ICU ward) with regard to mortality and major disability in cardiac surgery patients who had a moderate-to-high risk of death, this…
CMS: Two inpatients needed for hospital survey, resurvey
Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued a new requirement, effective immediately, that a hospital must have at least two active inpatients at the time of survey, or the survey/resurvey will not be allowed to continue, the Joint Commission reported November 15. The new requirement…
FDA: Baxter recalls one lot of injectable amiodarone
Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on November 15 announced the recall by Baxter International (Deerfield, Illinois) of one lot of Nexterone (amiodarone HCL) 150 mg/100 mL premixed injection because of the presence of particulate matter. The particulate matter was identified as polyethylene, the primary constituent of the…
Compassion practices linked to nurse well-being, patient perceptions of care
Editor's Note In this study, compassion practices were significantly and negatively associated with nurse emotional exhaustion and positively associated with nurse psychological vitality. Compassion practices were also positively associated with patient perceptions of care and overall patient ratings. Supplemental analysis found that nurse well-being mediates the relationship between compassion practices…
Joint Commission chooses Apervita platform to ease eCQM submission
Editor's Note The Joint Commission has selected Chicago-based Apervita’s platform to enable thousands of hospitals with ORYX data reporting requirement to directly submit electronic clinical quality measure (eCQM) data in 2018, the November 14 Healthcare Informatics reports. Since the shift to eCQM data submission began 2 years ago, the Joint…
Surgical robot market poised for growth
Editor's Note A Meddevicetracker analysis expects the global market for robotically assisted surgical devices to see an 11.7% compound annual growth rate, reaching $5.3 billon by 2021, the November 10 Medtech Insight reports The market is being led by Intuitive Surgical’s da Vinci systems, although the analysis predicts more competition…
Greater vigilance needed to combat ureteroscope contamination
A new study by Ofstead & Associates (St Paul, Minnesota) is the latest to raise concerns about infections associated with endoscopic procedures. The study, which focused on ureteroscopes, found that the techniques used to clean and sterilize or high-level disinfect flexible ureteroscopes are not sufficient and leave behind contamination including…
Remote video auditing: A path to compliance and safety
Perioperative services leaders seeking to improve safety and efficiency without sacrificing quality may want to turn to remote video auditing (RVA), which is being successfully used in hospital ORs and ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs). “We’ve seen improved patient safety, efficiency, and cleaning processes,” says Sheldon Newman, MD, executive vice chairman…
Editorial
Session evaluations from the 2017 OR Manager Conference attendees gave uniformly high marks to the keynote speakers. A common theme in many of their presentations was workplace attitudes. They discussed challenges such as converting the disengaged to the highly engaged employee, and fostering a sense of ownership. A workshop on…
San Antonio to host 2018 OR Business Management Conference
With each passing year, the business of healthcare delivery grows more complex—never more so than in 2017, when a new administration began to grapple with a major overhaul of the Affordable Care Act and changes to provider payment models. Thanks to an unprecedented number of proposals submitted for the 2018…