Two doctors are planning on opening urgent care clinics in Fort Worth and Arlington, TX. The clinics are targeting patients with minor injuries, infections, and other ailments that often prompt visits to hospital emergency rooms.
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.