As superbug outbreaks raised alarm across the country last year, a prominent doctor at a Philadelphia cancer center wrote in a leading medical journal about how to reduce the risk of these often-deadly patient infections. Dr. Jeffrey Tokar, director of gastrointestinal endoscopy at Fox Chase Cancer Center, pointed to recent outbreaks from contaminated medical scopes and discussed steps doctors and hospitals should take to ensure patient safety in his Sept. 22 article in the Annals of Internal Medicine. "Health care facilities and providers should strive to establish an environment of open information exchange with patients about what is being done to maximize their safety," Tokar and his two co-authors wrote.
As Wisconsin considers self-insuring state employees, some want officials to take another step that could save money: covering weight-loss surgery for state workers who are severely obese. Forty states pay for the surgery for state workers who qualify, five states are experimenting with coverage and four states provide no coverage, according to the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery. Wisconsin is in another category, covering less than 5 percent of workers through its most expensive health plan. UW Health surgeons, who have pressed for coverage for all state workers, say the move could save $60 million over 10 years by reducing costs from diabetes, heart disease, sleep apnea and other conditions related to obesity.
In the five years Colorado has regulated surgical technologists in its hospitals, Rocky Allen was only the second to get suspended. Allen, the 28-year-old hospital worker accused of stealing a powerful narcotic drug at Swedish Medical Center, had managed to move from state to state, getting fired by one hospital after another, before Colorado admitted him to work again in its operating rooms. This happened for two reasons: Colorado is one of a handful of states that regulate surgical technologists at all. And it doesn't perform background checks to see if applicants are lying about their work or criminal history.
A new hip replacement surgery technique offers quick recovery time and less pain; and it's catching some local residents' attention as it's now available in Lafayette. News 18 looks into the increasingly popular technique. Linda New found walking increasingly painful last year. She said activities like going to work and cooking dinner were almost unbearable because of her damaged hip. "In fact, I didn't realize how far away I was from just a normal life," New said. New had what Orthopedic Surgeon Dr. Joel Virkler calls a same-day hip replacement surgery. It's called the anterior approach and surgeons work in between the muscles and tissue rather than cutting through them, like other traditional methods.
On his way to a family meal this past Thanksgiving, LeRoy Clouser opened a public recycling bin to toss in some bottles and stumbled upon the largest Ohio-based breach of health data in at least six years. The bin on the north side of Springfield, about 50 miles west of Columbus, was filled with documents and films containing the names, Social Security numbers, medical information, dates of birth or other sensitive information on file for 113,000 people at Community Mercy Health Partners, which includes Springfield Regional Medical Center. It was the fifth-largest data breach in the nation involving paper records since the government began publicly and regularly disclosing the extent of larger breaches in 2009, according to the federal Office for Civil Rights.
Should an autopsy have been performed on the body of Justice Antonin Scalia? When a Texas justice of the peace certified that the 79-year-old Supreme Court justice had died from natural causes, questions immediately erupted. No autopsy had been performed, and the certification had been made without even an examination of the body. The unexpected death of a divisive public figure during an acerbic presidential campaign set off conspiracy theories and demands from political commentators that a pathologist perform an autopsy before Justice Scalia's burial on Saturday to prove no foul play was involved.