According to a study from researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, elderly Hispanics throughout the United States tend to get inferior care. The study reported that Medicare data from 2004 reveals that hospitals with high percentages of Hispanic patients tend to have slightly lower quality indicators for heart attacks, congestive heart failure and pneumonia.
After decades of poking and prodding patients at all hours, hospitals are waking up to the notion that sick people need sleep. WakeMed Health & Hospitals now observes nightly quiet hours at its facilities starting at 8 p.m. Several intensive care units at hospitals across the region offer daily quiet time. It's a welcome peace amid the persistent activity in the ICU, where nurses or other medical staff sometimes come to the bedside as often as every 20 minutes.
A patient's death after falling from his bed in a Florida emergency room has raised questions about a common practice of hospitals hiring outside, fill-in nurses on a regular basis. Critics of the practice, including nurses' groups and some industry officials, say medical care for patients may suffer when hospitals rely too heavily on short-term, temporary nurses who may not know a facility's system, patients, personnel or building as well as staff nurses. An estimated one in eight registered nurses in Florida hospitals were agency fill-ins, a survey found last year.
Dozen of healthcare clinics are now operating in schools around Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. The Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati funds the centers, and this month it will start taking applications to add six new centers at local schools over the next three years. So far, the program has been open only to schools that serve students in grades K-8. The next round of applications will be open to high schools. A study sponsored by the foundation found the centers improve students' health.
The national commission that accredits hospitals is investigating how administrators at Sacramento's Mercy General handled a power failure that may have left some surgery patients and their doctors in the dark during a massive storm in January. The Joint Commission made an unannounced visit to the hospital in early February to conduct an "on-site survey" related to the hospital's actions during the storm, which left an estimated 370,000 customers in the Sacramento region without power. The commission can remove accreditation if it finds a hospital violated established standards of care.
Continuing a race among Portland hospitals to add services for people with cancer, the Oregon Health & Science University Cancer Institute has hired a "Patient Navigator" to help patients do everything from finding support groups to paying bills. The American Cancer Society is covering part of the salaries for the new staff member who will try to help patients connect with services they need to ease their treatment.