New information on mismanagement at the Phoenix VA was released Thursday morning, pointing to the hospital's emergency department. The Special Counsel wrapped up its investigation and sent a letter to President Obama confirming what a former emergency room doctor has claimed all along. Dr. Katherine Mitchell says she started seeing lapses in care from emergency triage nurses as far back as 2009. "Strokes were missed," says Mitchell. "Heart attacks were missed. Blood infections were missed repeatedly over and over again." The investigation points to one instance where a patient, with a history of strokes, waited in the hospital's emergency department for eight hours.
A diabetes pill has been shown, for the first time, to reduce deaths among patients taking it. It's a big finding — and Lilly, the drug company that makes it, is trumpeting the results. The drug, called Jardiance, lowered heart disease deaths by 38 percent and deaths from any cause by 32 percent over three years, an international group of researchers reported in The New England Journal of Medicine. But doctors are not sure how the drug is doing it. There are many different classes of diabetes drugs, and they're designed to lower levels of sugar in the blood. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves them based on how well they do this.
Ambitious programs to improve the U.S. health care system typically include improving population health in their objectives. For example, that is one of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's "Triple Aims" (along with improving the patient experience and lowering the per capita cost of care). Similarly, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is designed to improve population health in multiple ways, the most obvious being improved access to care. But the ACA also aims to improve the quality of care, enhance prevention, and promote health through the implementation of affordable care organizations (ACOs) and the establishment of a new Prevention and Public Health Fund.
A researcher has devised a way to show how fast germs can spread in a hospital. Marco-Felipe King, a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Leeds, created a diagram that revealed how even a well-ventilated hospital room can harbor plenty of germs and viruses. King said he wanted to study the problem since one out of every 15 admitted patients in the United Kingdom contracts a disease while at the hospital. He said he also wanted to see how germs can spread in a multi-patient room versus a single-patient room.
Copper has many roles in society, from conducting electricity to wiring cars. It also can save lives. Replacing commonly touched hospital surfaces such as doorknobs, light switches and bed rails with products made of copper can reduce hospital-acquired infections by more than half, according to a 2013 clinical trial at three U.S. hospitals funded by the Department of Defense. Hospital-acquired infections are a big problem in health-care facilities, especially for immune-deficient cancer patients. One of every 25 hospital patients acquires such an infection, which kills nearly 100,000 people a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For the first time in several years, Los Angeles County officials are taking ambitious steps to expand the region's network of hospital trauma centers. But that plan could soon hit a roadblock. The county pays for 14 of the specialized emergency rooms, which treat only the most serious injuries, with help from a voter-approved parcel tax known as Measure B. The tax generates about $250 million a year, and officials recently pledged some of that revenue to develop a new, long-awaited trauma center in Pomona. On Tuesday, however, administrators from Antelope Valley Hospital in Lancaster sued the county, alleging that their trauma center hasn't received its fair share of tax measure funding.