An old-fashioned checklist has the potential to keep patients with heart failure out of the hospital—and save Medicare billions of dollars, a small new study suggests. The checklist aims to help ensure that patients stay healthy after discharge, instead of quickly returning to the hospital because their symptoms return or get worse, according to a study of 96 patients presented Saturday at the American College of Cardiology's annual meeting. The list prompts doctors to make sure that patients understand when and how to take their medications, for example, and how to monitor their blood pressure and modify their diet and exercise. Only 2 percent of patients whose doctors used the checklist were readmitted within a month, compared to 20 percent of other patients, according to the study.
An army hospital in Tacoma, Wash. is under fire for reneging on mental health care for troops diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Since 2007, more than 300 soldiers under consideration for medical retirement because of PTSD had their diagnoses reversed by a screening team at Madigan Army Medical Center—a move criticized for putting costs before care. "Over 40 percent of those service members who walked in the door with a PTSD diagnosis had their diagnosis changed to something else or overturned entirely," Sen. Patty Murray said at a Defense Appropriations Subcommittee hearing Wednesday. The diagnosis can cost taxpayers as much as $1.5 million per soldier, according to an Army Medical Command memo obtained by the Seattle Times.
Amid ongoing shortages of critical drugs, 60 percent of hospital pharmacists surveyed said they've been forced to trash life-saving or expensive medications because of misguided government rules, a new poll shows. Discarded have been more than 100 different drugs, including 80 percent that are now or have been in short supply, and costly medications such as Velcade. That's according to a just-published survey of 715 hospital pharmacy directors, managers and clinicians nationwide who responded to queries by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices.
Doctors, nurses and visitors at UW Hospital's main intensive care unit are putting on gowns and gloves when seeing all patients, in a national study of whether the precautions curb infection rates. Since January, workers at UW Hospital have been using gowns and gloves for all patients in the 24-bed Trauma and Life Support Center. Visitors are being told to do the same. The hospital is one of 20 hospitals participating in a CDC-sponsored study called Benefits of Universal Glove and Gowning, or BUGG.
Some drug distributors are setting up fake pharmacies that allow them to obtain and then artificially raise the prices for cancer drugs and other medicines that are in short supply, according to letters written by lawmakers Wednesday. Lawmakers are looking into what they claim is a "gray market" for scarce prescription drugs that has emerged in recent months. Three Democrats on Wednesday sent letters to pharmacies that they say appear to have sold drugs in short supply to drug wholesalers which sold them at a sharp markup instead of dispensing the drugs to patients.
Two nurses and Rush SurgiCenter have been fined by a state agency for violating radiation protection regulations after an investigation found that the nurses operated X-ray equipment they were not supposed to use. By Illinois law, radiologic equipment must be operated by health professionals licensed under the state Medical Practice Act. The civil penalty from the Illinois Emergency Management Agency comes amid growing national concern about overexposure to medical radiation, including highly publicized cases in which patients were injured or died after undergoing CT scans and other radiologic procedures. Some patients were overdosed as a result of human error.