Virginia Commonwealth University Health System (VCU Health) in Richmond is a Magnet facility, and as such we continually examine innovative ideas to improve the quality, safety, and care of our patients. Evidence has linked Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) with better outcomes, and ERAS has become a focal point at…

Read More

Editor's Note Surgisphere Corporation (Palatine, Illinois) on March 12 announced the availability of its new rapid diagnostic test for COVID-19 that uses artificial intelligence (AI). With advanced machine learning, Surgisphere has developed an intelligent tool that uses three common lab tests to identify patients likely to have COVID-19 infection. With…

Read More

Editor's Note Combining a mathematical model of COVID-19 transmission with four datasets from within and outside Wuhan, China, researchers with the Centre for Mathematical Modeling of Infectious Diseases COVID-19 working group, estimated how transmission in Wuhan varied between December 2019 (before travel restrictions) and February 2020 (after travel restrictions) and…

Read More

Editor's Note A survey of 500 US healthcare industry leaders conducted by Optum finds that executives are ramping up their implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) efforts, with 62% saying they have adopted AI strategies in their organizations, the March 11 HealthIT Analytics reports. This is a nearly 88% increase from…

Read More

Editor's Note The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on March 9 released two interoperability rules, which will give patients direct access to their healthcare data. These rules mark the most extensive healthcare data sharing policies the federal government has implemented, requiring public and private entities to share…

Read More

Editor's Note Humana is using artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic processes to help frontline healthcare personnel with daily tasks and to streamline access to patient care, the March 2 Forbes reports. It is testing how to pull information from medical records based on identifying key words in conversations between healthcare…

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 Employment in US hospitals was up 8,800 jobs in December to a seasonally adjusted 5,297,100, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on January 10. That’s up 102,000 more employees than a year ago. Overall, healthcare employment has increased 398,800 in the past year. The overall unemployment rate remains…

Read More

The Best in OR Business Award is presented annually at the OR Business Management Conference to recognize an outstanding leader who has saved on costs, increased OR utilization, improved patient safety, or otherwise streamlined the surgical services department. The 2020 award will be presented to Vikram Tiwari, PhD, associate professor…

Read More

Editor's Note In this first-year analysis of a data capture system called the OR Black Box, frequent intraoperative errors, events, variation in surgeons’ technical skills, and a high amount of environmental distractions were identified. In 132 patients having elective laparoscopic general surgery: auditory distractions occurred a median of 138 times…

Read More