Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), on December 20, identified the recall by Arrow International, LLC, subsidiary of Teleflex, Inc, of its Arrow AutoCAT 2 and AC3 intra-aortic balloon pumps (IABPs) as Class I, the most serious. IABPs are used in patients having cardiac and non-cardiac surgery, and…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission announced on December 21 that they are eliminating 168 standards (14%) and revising 14 other standards across its accreditation programs in the new year. The Joint Commission additionally announced that it will not raise accreditation fees for domestic hospitals in the coming year due the…

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Editor's Note The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) announced on December 21 that it no longer recommends Universal COVID-19 screening for asymptomatic hospital patients, reports December 21 Fierce Healthcare. The new recommendation was published by the organization’s board of directors in the Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology journal.…

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Editor's Note Hospital leaders are preparing for what is expected to be a turbulent 2023, according to results of a December 13 survey from the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, reports December 19 Healthcare Purchasing News. The majority of health system leaders said that staffing challenges (85%) and inflation (76%)…

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Editor's Note This international sleep study led by researchers at the University of Bergen, Norway, finds that shift/night work was not associated with an increased risk of COVID-19, but if shift/night workers became infected, they had more severe disease. The analysis included 7,141 workers from 15 countries and 4 continents.…

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Editor's Note US Children’s hospitals are seeing a surge in invasive group A strep infections, NBC News reported on December 14, December 15 Becker’s Hospital Review reports. Physicians in Arizona, Colorado, Texas and Washington told NBC that they are detecting higher numbers of cases compared to past years, with Texas…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission announced on December 14 that it will be eliminating the term “licensed independent practitioner” from its critical access hospital and hospital programs, effective February 19, 2023. The updated terminology is consistent with that used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Conditions of Participation…

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Takeaways Many OR managers said they were overdue for a survey by The Joint Commission because of the pandemic. The Joint Commission is said to be 3,000 surveys behind. More checklists are being used by surveyors, which are available in The Joint Commission’s Perspectives and EC News newsletters. New in…

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Takeaways Natural language processing (NLP) may be helpful for predicting surgical outcomes and can facilitate more robust research. NLP comes with challenges that include potential for bias, costs, technology and terminology barriers, and the need to adapt to new ways of thinking. Before purchasing products that use NLP, OR leaders…

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Nursing was once the most stable profession—that was a point driven home by several sessions at the 2022 OR Manager Conference. As one can imagine, the current staffing shortage was the main topic discussed throughout the conference back in October. However, while the conversation did not shy away from affirming…

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