Editor's Note In this study, a significant association was found between exposure to World Trade Center dust and long-term cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk in firefighters. Of 9,796 firefighters analyzed, those who arrived first at the World Trade Center when dust was the thickest were found to have a 44% increased…

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Editor's Note In this study, robotic cholecystectomy was associated with lesser lengths of stay and readmission rates than laparoscopic cholecystectomy. The robotic procedure also had greater operative duration and hospital costs. Of 3,255 patients who had cholecystectomy during the study period, the researchers matched 106 robotic and 1,060 laparoscopic cases.…

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Editor's Note Strong evidence suggests that most declines in excess readmissions--after implementation of Medicare’s Hospital Readmission Reduction Program (HRRP)--at poorly performing hospitals can be explained by a statistical phenomenon called “regression to the mean [RTM],” this study finds. In RTM, entities farther away from the mean in one period are…

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Editor's Note In this study, changing the responsibility for ICU patient transports to the OR from the anesthesia to the ICU services did not change turnover times, but it resulted in more on-time starts and high compliance with preoperative checklist documentation. The crude proportion of on-time starts increased from 32.6%…

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Editor's Note Senior surgical residents can safely supervise junior residents performing appendectomies, and training programs should encourage faculty to let senior residents manage operative appendicitis as independently as possible as well as supervise junior residents intraoperatively, this study finds. In this review of 928 appendectomies performed at the University of…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission on August 28 announced the publication of an R3 Report on two new standards designed to improve the quality and safety of perinatal care in accredited hospitals. The standards, which will take effect July 1, 2020, require organizations to examine their processes and procedures for…

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Editor's Note Using a learning culture perspective that acknowledges blame and responsibility can facilitate learning from mistakes, this Canadian study finds. A total of 19 physicians were interviewed on their experiences in learning from medical errors. Memories of mistakes from residence training stood out, and participants expressed feeling both responsible…

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Editor's Note Sentara Healthcare (Norfolk, Virginia) is using a sepsis prediction tool to help alert physicians and nurses when a patient is at risk of developing the infection, the August 26 Reading Eagle reports. The tool uses artificial intelligence (AI) to run some 4,500 pieces of patient data through an…

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Editor's Note A machine learning algorithm based on data from the American College of Cardiology’s National Cardiovascular Data Registry accurately identified patients at risk for bleeding during or after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery, the August 23 Health IT Analytics reports. Researchers developed the platform using a risk spectrum…

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Poor communication has been the root cause of many sentinel events over the years, and there has been growing recognition of how the work environment and culture influence patient outcomes. In a 2018 Sentinel Event Alert, the Joint Commission stressed the need to develop a “reporting culture”—to make it safe…

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