The National Patient Safety Foundation has proposed a Universal Patient Compact to establish a mutual covenant between healthcare providers and their patients. The compact will describe the agreed upon commitments that both patients and physicians must make to make sure a patient has a quality healthcare experience.
A study published in the February 25 edition of the Archives of Internal Medicine says that mandatory reporting of hospital quality measures has led to a high rate of misdiagnosis among pneumonia patients.
The current decade hasn't been kind to Maryland's babies, with rising percentages born underweight or dying in infancy, according to a report by Advocates for Children & Youth. Meanwhile, declining percentages of women were entering prenatal care early in their pregnancies, according to the most recent data, depriving them of care needed to stave off bad outcomes.
According to a study from researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, elderly Hispanics throughout the United States tend to get inferior care. The study reported that Medicare data from 2004 reveals that hospitals with high percentages of Hispanic patients tend to have slightly lower quality indicators for heart attacks, congestive heart failure and pneumonia.
After decades of poking and prodding patients at all hours, hospitals are waking up to the notion that sick people need sleep. WakeMed Health & Hospitals now observes nightly quiet hours at its facilities starting at 8 p.m. Several intensive care units at hospitals across the region offer daily quiet time. It's a welcome peace amid the persistent activity in the ICU, where nurses or other medical staff sometimes come to the bedside as often as every 20 minutes.
A patient's death after falling from his bed in a Florida emergency room has raised questions about a common practice of hospitals hiring outside, fill-in nurses on a regular basis. Critics of the practice, including nurses' groups and some industry officials, say medical care for patients may suffer when hospitals rely too heavily on short-term, temporary nurses who may not know a facility's system, patients, personnel or building as well as staff nurses. An estimated one in eight registered nurses in Florida hospitals were agency fill-ins, a survey found last year.