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.
Florida's Lake Nona "medical city" project is finally breaking groung as construction begins on the University of Central Florida's College of Medicine and its Burnett College of Biomedical Sciences, as well as the Burnham Institute for Medical Research. All three facilities are scheduled to open in the latter half of 2009. UCF hopes to eventually add a school of nursing at the site in southeastern Orlando, though that would be years down the road. Also planned is a cancer-research institute that will likely be run jointly by M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Orlando and UCF, and a long-awaited VA hospital, but construction on the latter facility won't begin until 2009 at the earliest, with an expected opening date of 2012.
The doctor-patient relationship is a social dance that, at its core, is driven by a sick person feeling dependent, vulnerable and wanting to be liked by the doctor. The more worried a patient is about his or her health, the more exaggerated the dance--often to the detriment of the patient's health. Yet, doctors also need to be liked, so how do you find a common ground?