There's a special team at the emergency department of Nemours Children's Hospital that has one main responsibility: taking care of children's boo-boos. The Boo-Boo Care Team for the past year has been treating kids' wounds: cuts, bites, stings, ingrown nails and other small injuries that bring children to the emergency room. What makes the team unique is that it is made up of paramedics. The presence of paramedics in the ER isn't new. Hospitals, including Orlando Health and Florida Hospital, hire paramedics as technicians to administer IVs, triage patients, draw blood or transport patients.
When Stephen S. Grubbs, MD, was opening his medical oncology practice 31 years ago in Delaware, he took to heart the sage advice of a senior hematologist.
Responding to a series of infections connected to inadequately sterilized duodenoscopes, the FDA on Tuesday released a set of "supplemental reprocessing measures" aimed at minimizing the risk of residual pathogens on these devices.
Once again, the majority of the nation's hospitals are being penalized by Medicare for having patients frequently return within a month of discharge — this time losing a combined $420 million, government records show. In the fourth year of federal readmission penalties, 2,592 hospitals will receive lower payments for every Medicare patient that stays in the hospital — readmitted or not — starting in October. The Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program, created by the Affordable Care Act, was designed to make hospitals pay closer attention to what happens to their patients after they get discharged.
Gov. Rick Scott's war on hospitals continued last week when the Jobs Governor released a statement criticizing St. Petersburg General Hospital, UF Health Jacksonville, and Venice Regional Bayfront Health for being ranked by Consumer Reports among the worst hospitals in the nation for infection prevention. "The news that three Florida hospitals are the worst in America for preventing infections is troubling and unacceptable," Scott said. It's doubtful many outside the healthcare industry were even aware of the rankings before Scott highlighted them. But now they are front-and-center in Scott's nonstop effort to embarrass the state's hospital industry.