The Dallas hospital that has treated three Ebola patients will no longer admit anyone who has been infected with the disease, Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced Tuesday. Texas health officials are creating a pair of new Ebola treatment centers to handle any additional cases. Neither of those facilities are at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, which has been heavily criticized for its flawed care of the country's first Ebola patient. "In the event of another diagnosis, [these facilities] will allow us to act quickly to limit the virus's reach and give patients the care they need in an environment where healthcare workers are specially trained and equipped to deal with the unique requirements of this disease," Perry said Tuesday.
While Ebola stokes public anxiety, more than one in six hospitals — including some top medical centers — are having trouble stamping out less exotic but sometimes deadly infections, federal records show. Nationally, about one in every 25 hospitalized patients gets an infection, and 75,000 people die each year from them—more than from car crashes and gun shots combined. A Kaiser Health News analysis found 695 hospitals with higher than expected rates for at least one of the six types of infections tracked by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
At manufacturing plants in North Carolina, Mexico and Honduras, the machines are standing ready. The plants, which make gowns and other protective equipment that medical staff need to treat Ebola patients, have hired extra workers to make sure the machines can run all night. Some already are. "We are not at our maximum capacity yet," said Judson Boothe, the senior director of products supply for Halyard Health, a unit of Kimberly-Clark that operates the plants (it is soon to be spun off from its parent). "But we're getting closer every day," he said, adding that Halyard did hit its cap during the SARS outbreak.
The Department of Veterans Affairs health care system in Phoenix does not comply with U.S. standards for safety, patient care and management, according to a non-profit organization that reviews medical facilities nationwide. In findings published online, The Joint Commission says Carl T. Hayden VA Medical Center failed a July inspection in 13 quality-control categories. Experts who conducted the review in July found that Phoenix administrators did not maintain a "safe, functional environment" or "a culture of safety and quality." They concluded that the hospital does not have adequate policies and procedures to "guide and support patient care, treatment and services."
Federal officials announced new guidelines on Monday evening for the protection of hospital workers caring for patients infected with Ebola--guidelines that might have prevented the infection of two nurses had they been in place a month ago.The new guidelines, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, follow broad revisions announced just last week. The new recommendations provide considerably more detail, however, and have been reviewed by specialists at American hospitals that have successfully cared for Ebola patients. The procedures are based on the very strict protocols used for years by Doctors Without Borders, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the CDC's executive director, said during an unusual late-evening telephone news conference.
"Diagnosing Ebola is very different from treating Ebola." That assessment, by Dr. Daniel Varga, chief clinical officer at Texas Health Resources, during testimony before a Congressional panel on Thursday, sums up a critical concern at the heart of the current Ebola scare. It was the challenge faced by staff at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas as they struggled in late September to identify and manage the case of Thomas Eric Duncan, the first patient ever diagnosed with Ebola on American soil. Duncan, a Liberian national, died of the disease on Oct. 8. The problem: the absence of an accurate, rapid test for Ebola, even in the disease's symptomatic stages.