During an 18-month pilot project, nine California hospitals were able to prevent an estimated 600 healthcare-associated infections by using a data-mining program to comb through computerized records and flagging infections to thwart their spread.
Under legislation that California Sen. Elaine Alquist plans to introduce, the state would have one of the most sweeping laws in the nation for tracking "superbugs" in hospitals and other settings. The bill would require hospitals and nursing homes to make public their infection rates.
Access to the prescription writing habits of physicians is becoming a new battleground. For example, every state in New England has a prescription transparency issue in dispute. A new law was to take effect in Maine on Jan. 1 making the prescription writing habits of physicians confidential under state law.
Sponges are the most common foreign objects left behind in surgeries, according to several medical-device companies. Now, spiking costs are forcing providers to tighten surgical procedures aimed at making sure sponges are not left inside patients because retrieving a sponge in a redo surgery can cost $50,000 or more.
When Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston opens its new cardiovascular wing in May, all 136 rooms will include a family sleeping area. Brigham is one of a growing number of U.S. hospitals experimenting with open access or nearly open access for families of adult ICU patients.
Emergency room doctors are prescribing strong narcotics more often to patients who complain of pain, but minorities are less likely to get them than whites, according to a study. The analysis of more than 150,000 emergency room visits over 13 years found differences in prescribing by race and ethnicity in both urban and rural hospitals.