A new study suggests seniors who spend time in a hospital may leave with more germs than they had before entering. In their research, published in a JAMA Internal Medicine research letter, University of Michigan researchers found one in four seniors are discharged from the hospital with at least one superbug on their hands. The study also found that seniors who go to a nursing home or other post-acute care (PAC) facility tend to continue acquiring new superbugs during their stay. The data focused on those who have been admitted to a hospital recently for a medical or surgical issue, and needed extra medical care before returning home.
Victoria Morrison is the sole nurse practitioner working in the Anaheim Fire & Rescue’s Community Care Response Unit. The one-year pilot program aims to cut costs from the healthcare system, keep patients from making unnecessary, and potentially costly, trips to the hospital and also freeing up Anaheim firefighters to respond to bigger emergencies in Orange County’s most populous city. “The tough calls are the low-acuity calls that aren’t really an emergency, where we don’t need to transport someone with the lights and sirens on,” Barry said.
The law limits first-time prescriptions for opioid drugs — such as those prescribed as painkillers after surgery — to a seven-day supply, with exceptions for treating cancer or chronic pain and it allows patients to fill a lesser amount of an opioid prescription. The law requires doctors to check a state Prescription Monitoring Program each time they prescribe an addictive opioid and establishes a drug stewardship program to dispose of unneeded drugs. Most provisions of the bill go into effect immediately. The requirement for doctors to check the Prescription Monitoring Program will be effective in October.
Abbott Northwestern Hospital is reporting success using acupuncture in its emergency room to treat everything from car accident injuries to migraines to kidney stones, and hoping to prove that the traditional Chinese treatment can reduce doctors’ reliance on addictive opioids to manage patients’ pain. The Minneapolis hospital was the first in the nation to staff its ER with an acupuncturist two years ago.It reported this month that pain scores in those who received acupuncture alone dropped by the same amount as those who also received analgesic painkillers.
The chairman of a powerful US Senate committee has asked 20 hospital systems, including the parent company of Massachusetts General Hospital, to provide detailed records about the controversial practice of allowing surgeons to operate on more than one patient at a time. Senator Orrin G. Hatch, a Utah Republican who heads the Finance Committee, has requested the information, including the total number of “concurrent surgeries,’’ broken down by specialty, at each hospital from 2011 to 2015, and policies about whether patients are informed beforehand.
The top two U.S. doctors fighting the Zika epidemic sounded even louder alarm bells about the deadly virus on Thursday, insisting it poses an urgent threat and begging Congress to free up money to pay for the fight. Efforts to fight other diseases, from HIV to dengue, are on hold while money is cobbled together for the anti-Zika push, the directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) said. CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden visited Puerto Rico, the U.S. territory that he calls "ground zero" for Zika in the U.S.. He didn't have much good news to share from his visit.