Primary care reminders key to timely follow up for cancer patients with abnormal screenings
Editor's Note Patient outreach efforts, including a reminder in the electronic health record (EHR) following an abnormal cancer screening, helped to ensure timely follow-up, a new investigative study in JAMA Network reports. This cluster randomized clinical trial, titled "A multilevel primary care intervention to improve follow-up of overdue abnormal cancer…
Patient perceptions of surgeon bias are influenced by race, gender
Editor's Note A new study in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery found that Black patients are more likely to perceive bias from their surgeons compared to White patients. The study, titled "Patient preferences and perceptions of provider diversity in orthopedic surgery," was published on October 6. The study…
The Joint Commission addresses pressure injury dangers in new Quick Safety
Editor's Note The Joint Commission has released a new Quick Safety Issue to call attention to the serious risks inherent with pressure injuries. "Quick Safety Issue 70: Early identification and evaluation of severe pressure injuries" was published on October 9. The following are some highlights: Pressure injuries can be caused…
Study evaluates the effectiveness of predictive AI in healthcare settings, identifies shortcomings
Editor's Note Implementing predictive AI models in healthcare settings can alter the baseline assumptions the models were trained on in ways that cause the models to perform worse, according to a recent simulation study published on October 6 by the Annals of Internal Medicine. The study analyzed 130,000 critical care…
Cybersecurity alert: Vulnerability in Cisco’s Emergency Responder communications platform
Editor's Note Cisco has released an update that fixes a critical vulnerability in their Emergency Responder communications platform, a system used throughout the health sector, an October 6 HC3: Sector Alert from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Information Security reports. The HHS recommends that healthcare systems…
[Free Webinar] From Conflict to Collaboration: A Deep Dive into Data-Driven Decision-Making
Maximizing surgeon and staff productivity and efficient use of operating room time (and minimizing conflict) that arises around surgeon accessibility and efficient use of operating room time is an achievable goal when all stakeholders have the capability to easily access transparent and actionable data. Adopting technology with predictive and prescriptive…
High labor costs, weak margins continue at nation’s nonprofit hospitals
Editor's Note An October 2023 report from Fitch Ratings finds that nonprofit hospitals will continue to have weak operating margins into 2024 and need to control labor costs in order to return to stronger margins, Chief Healthcare Executive October 5 reports. Some highlights of the report include: Median operating margins…
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Refreshed outlook for addressing healthcare’s staffing crisis
The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified existing personnel shortages in hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers (ASC), which are anticipated to persist. Before the pandemic, nursing supply and demand were already affected negatively by several factors, including approximately 70,000 Baby Boomer RNs retiring per year. As the remaining Baby Boomer RNs retire over…
First nasal vaccine in development for deadly Strep A
Editor's Note A new nasal vaccine in development by Griffith University’s Institute for Glycomics in Australia could provide long-term protection against the deadly bacteria Streptococcus A (Strep A), Griffith University's Griffith News October 5 reports. Strep A causes 700 million human infections each year, and there are more than 500,000…