Editor's Note Physicians at the University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, announced on September 28 that the Zika virus may be transmitted in sweat and tears, NBC News reports. The case of a Utah man who infected his 38-year old son before he died in July leaves…

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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 ECRI Institute Patient Safety Organization on September 26 released its newest analysis of patient safety errors−a Deep Dive review of reported events involving patient identification. Researchers reviewed more than 7,600 wrong-patient events occurring over a 32-month period that were voluntarily submitted by 181 healthcare organizations. Approximately 9%…

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Editor's Note The American College of Surgeons (ACS) and the Hartford Consensus on September 16 announced the launch of a new website designed to assist the public and first responders in the event of a mass casualty or other bleeding control emergency. The website, BleedingControl.org, contains diagrams, videos, and other…

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Editor's Note The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on August 15 published a proposed rule on Control of Communicable Diseases. The proposal amends the CDC’s domestic and foreign quarantine regulations to help respond to outbreaks of new or reemerging communicable diseases, such as Ebola, Middle Ease Respiratory Syndrome…

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Editor's Note The American Hospital Association (AHA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on August 11 hosted a call for healthcare leaders on the latest Zika virus developments and how to protect patients and caregivers, the August 11 AHA News Now reports. CDC officials said they will soon…

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Healthcare facilities are places of healing. Sometimes they also can be places of danger and death—just like the rest of the world. When an ambulatory surgery center (ASC) became the site of a fatal stabbing 3 years ago, outpatient surgery leapt into the public eye, and not in a good…

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Editor's Note Johns Hopkins University engineering students have designed an Ebola protection suit with a more comfortable hood and face mask that makes breathing easier, and it has a battery-powered system that lowers humidity in the suit. The University and DuPont have signed license and collaboration agreements allowing DuPont to…

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The Hospital Safety Score, issued twice yearly, uses national performance measures from the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and the American Hospital Association. Leapfrog rated 2,571 hospitals on their ability…

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Healthcare is striving to become an industry of high-reliability organizations. Part of being a high-reliability industry means staying vigilant and identifying problems proactively. That’s one function of patient safety organizations (PSOs), such as ECRI Institute PSO, and one of the reasons ECRI produces its annual Top 10 list of patient…

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