Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) hospital penalization in the Hospital Acquired Condition Reduction Program (HACRP) was not associated with significant changes in rates of hospital acquired conditions (HACs), 30-day readmissions, or 30-day mortality and does not appear to drive meaningful clinical improvements, this study finds.…

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Editor's Note The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced on July 9 that it has formed a summit of key industry stakeholders and government leaders to provide insight as the Trump administration seeks to streamline, improve, and align measures used across federal healthcare quality programs. The Quality Summit,…

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Editor's Note In this study, a predictive model that can help identify patients at higher odds for not requiring a prolonged hospital length of stay (LOS) after total hip arthroplasty was developed and validated and a point-based calculator was designed. The calculator included nine variables: age, opioid use, metabolic equivalents…

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Editor's Note Oxygenation was impaired by anesthesia more often in patients with greater age or body mass index, this study finds. This retrospective analysis of data from two hospitals found key contributors to impaired oxygenation were low ventilation/perfusion ratios because of airway narrowing and closure in the elderly and atelectasis-induced…

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Editor's Note Retooling paper-based measures to electronic format for reporting performance measures can help reduce hospitals’ reporting burden. However, in this study by Joint Commission and State University of New York researchers, a simplified risk model using electronic health record (EHR) elements could not capture most risk factors in the…

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Editor's Note A new scoring system reveals a strong agreement between patient-reported and physician-reported outcomes after surgery, the Mayo Clinic reports. The study enrolled 100 patients who had elbow or shoulder surgery. The average time between surgery and follow-up was 31 months. In the categorical ratings, patients and physicians agreed…

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Editor's Note The ECRI Institute on June 20 announced that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) had awarded it with the Network of Quality Improvement and Innovation Contractors (NQIIC) designation. With this designation and partnering with other quality improvement contractors under the new CMS Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quanity (IDIQ)…

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“What we have right now, quite frankly, in healthcare are islands—visible islands of excellence in a sea of invisible failures, with risk lurking just below the waterline. We need to widen those islands of excellence. We need to connect these islands with more dry land. We need to address these…

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Editor's Note In this multi-center study, longer durations of surgical prophylaxis did not result in further reductions in surgical site infections (SSIs) but were associated with increasing adverse events. Of 79,058 surgical patients in the VA healthcare system, SSI was not associated with duration of prophylaxis, but odds of acute…

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Contaminated surgical instruments pose a danger to patients and to an organization’s bottom line. In Part 1 of this two-part series, we discussed prevention strategies (OR Manager, April 2019, 14-15, 19). In Part 2, the focus is on investigating potential contamination, along with design considerations.   Detective work Despite best…

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