Kansas City, MO-based Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics is trying to become one of the best children's hospitals in the world--and pediatric research is part of the prescription for getting there. Funding for research at Children's Mercy has nearly doubled since the start of this decade, and the hospital is widely known for pediatric pharmacology research.
A wave of vomiting and diarrhea has swept through wards at Brigham and Women's and Massachusetts General hospitals and at a day-care facility run by Children's Hospital Boston. The norovirus outbreak left more than 70 patients and staff members ill. The caseshighlight the challenge of making sure that doctors, nurses, and other medical workers routinely and rigorously clean their hands to help avoid such outbreaks.
Almost half of all infections acquired at hospitals are in are linked to catheters, but a study has found that hospitals are doing very little to reduce the risks. The reportsays that even the most basic steps to make catheters safer are often not taken.
France, Japan and Australia rated best and the United States worst rankings focusing on preventable deaths due to treatable conditions in 19 leading industrialized nations. If the U.S. healthcare system performed as well as those of those top three countries, there would be 101,000 fewer deaths in the United States per year, according to researchers.
Much of Maryland faces a doctor shortage that could become severe by 2015, according to a report from the Maryland State Medical Society and the Maryland Hospital Association. The trend could force patients to wait longer for appointments, search for specialists and turn more frequently to emergency rooms for help, the groups warned.
Although specific infection rates are not publicly reported in North Carolina, many Triangle health system hospitals say they have seen serious infections fall by at least half in recent years. The improvement has come from low-tech solutions such as improving hand washing before and after contact with patients, and from following proven infection control practices more consistently. The hospitals took a fresh look at infection control after the national Institute of Medicine published the landmark 1999 report, which found that up to 98,000 patients die each year because of preventable medical errors--including preventable infections.