Editor's Note Denver Health was awarded a nearly $232,000 federal grant to expand its text messaging program, the October 13 Denver Post reports. The system will use the grant to link text messages directly to patients’ electronic health records so physicians can see patients’ texts on their medical charts. Denver…

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Performance improvement teams (PITs) have helped many businesses resolve workflow or other obstacles impeding efficiency. For perioperative services, PITs consist of a multidisciplinary group of frontline personnel associated with a defined process. PITs often have a key facilitator and are sponsored by leadership. Missions and goals are created, progress is…

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Editor's Note Surgical ICU patients who were assigned to an early mobilization program were discharged sooner from the ICU and the hospital and needed less help after discharge, compared with those who had standard care, this study finds. The analysis included 104 patients assigned to early mobilization and 96 who…

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Editor's Note In this study, nonhierarchical modeling to measure hospital performance frequently misclassified average-quality hospitals as low quality, and hierarchical modeling misclassified low-quality hospitals as average. At low hospital case volumes, hierarchical modeling missed 90.6% of low-quality hospitals, and nonhierarchical modeling missed 65.3%. However, 38.9% of hospitals classified as low-quality…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission on September 27 announced that it has deleted 51 Elements of Performance (EPs) from its hospital accreditation standards, effective January 2017. Reasons for deletion include: Similar to, implicit in, or duplicative of other EPs. Address issues that have been covered by standards for many years…

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Editor's Note Surgeon buy-in and OR teamwork characterized by shared clinical leadership, open communication, active coordination, and mutual respect related positively to case-related conversation prompts, but not to completing procedural checks, this study finds. A total of 207 procedures in 10 South Carolina hospitals were included in the study. The…

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Editor's Note Postoperative outcomes in the Veterans Affairs (VA) health system have consistently improved for the past 15 years, this study finds. In this analysis of nearly 705,000 patients undergoing noncardiac surgical procedures at 143 hospitals, absolute rates and likelihood of complications, mortality, and failure to rescue significantly decreased 40%…

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Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on September 13 announced that 30-day patient readmissions fell by an estimated 565,000 over 5 years, from 2010 to 2015. Rates declined by more than 5% in 43 states and by more than 10% in 11 states. The only state…

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Editor's Note Postoperative readmissions are difficult to predict when the patient is discharged, and of the information available at that time, preoperative factors are the most important, this study finds. Of nearly 240,000 surgical patients included in the analysis, 43% were orthopedic, 39% were general, and 18% were vascular. The…

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Editor's Note The implementation of Lean system redesigns was associated with a significant and sustained wait list reduction from 33.4 days to 12.0 days for patients waiting for elective general surgery in a Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital, this study finds. Along with the three-fold decrease in wait times from 2014…

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