Concerned about the potential for medical errors as the number of non-English speakers grows, Illinois hospitals are rolling out a live video system that can translate from medical-care providers to patients in 150 languages. The Metropolitan Chicago Healthcare Council and California-based Paras and Associates have launched the effort in three hospitals in Chicago and a fourth in Salem; 25 other facilities are considering adopting the technology.
A state report says California hospitals are reducing the already slim risk of death from coronary artery bypass surgery. The report, which was based on more than 32,000 operations performed in 2005 and 2006, also rated all 284 bypass surgeons in California. This is the fourth in a series of state reports that have charted a general decline in bypass surgery mortality rates from 2.9% in 2003, the first year studied, to 2.2% in 2006, the most recent year under review.
An Oregon Senate committee passed four bills aimed at improving healthcare and reducing costs. The committee approved bills to establish a council to help healthcare providers convert to electronic patient records, bring together insurers and healthcare providers to develop and use evidenced-based clinical guidelines and best practices, and establish a database on Oregon's healthcare work force size and needs.
The Obama administration is working with Congress to mandate that all Medicare payments be tied to "quality metrics," but an analysis of this drive for better healthcare reveals a fundamental flaw in how quality is defined and metrics applied, according to this opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal. In too many cases, the quality measures have been hastily adopted, only to be proven wrong and even potentially dangerous to patients, the authors write.
The efforts by hospitals in the Dallas-Fort Worth to fight infections often revolve around creative programs that boil down to keeping hands clean. For example, Arlington-based Texas Health Resources Inc. reinforces protocols with "time outs" in surgical situations to double-check sterilization of equipment and supplies. Meanwhile, Baylor Health Care System spent $6 million on training and data collection across its 15 North Texas hospitals. In addition, $2 million was spent on a program that supplements incomes of physicians who conduct research on improving quality.
In 2007 Medtronic stopped selling the Sprint Fidelis, a heart defibrillator cable, after five patients who had the cables died.
But only now is the full scope of the public health problem becoming clear for the Sprint Fidelis, which is still used by 150,000 people in this country. In the next few years, thousands of those patients may face risky surgical procedures to remove and replace the electrical cable. Medtronic estimates that the cable has failed in a little more than 5% of patients after 45 months of being implanted. But as a preventive measure, some patients with working cables are having them removed. Already, four patients have died during extractions.