Although hospital infections remain high and are increasing in New York State, overall death rates have improved for medical care, according to the latest report card on hospitals. The Niagara Health Quality Coalition examined data from 2006 on deaths, inappropriate numbers of procedures and patient safety measures in 31 areas of care—including infection rates due to medical care, heart bypass surgery deaths and numbers of cesarean section deliveries. Hospitals were then ranked based on whether their results were better, worse or the same as the state average.
Saint Agnes Medical Center in Fresno, CA, is suspending open-heart surgeries while the state investigates a rash of postoperative infections. The California Department of Public Health recommended that Saint Agnes Medical Center in Fresno stop performing the surgeries. A hospital spokeswoman says the infections happened in the first three months of this year, and the hospital hopes to have the problem resolved soon.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has developed a new guide for hospital leaders and others who want to learn how to get patients and families to partner with healthcare providers on community-based patient safety advisory councils. The Guide for Developing a Community-Based Patient Safety Advisory Council was developed through AHRQ's Partnerships in Implementing Patient Safety grants program by a team of researchers.
New research shows significant variation in the quality of care provided by health systems across the country. In the findings, nonprofit health systems had, on average, quality scores 7% higher than for-profit health systems, and more centralized health systems had 5% higher overall quality scores than decentralized health systems. For the study, researchers with the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement analyzed data from more than 70 U.S. health systems.
A Japanese research team has developed a proposal for a remote healthcare system that will allow caregivers to communicate with patients through video and voice technologies, keep track of a patient's vital signs, and monitor a patient's food and medicine supply from a remote location. Researchers say that their system could address some important socioeconomic problems, such as providing quality medical care for citizens living in small towns and rural areas. Currently, people in sparsely populated areas of the country are usually required to seek sophisticated healthcare some distance from their homes.
The nonprofit Consumers Union is launching a new hospital-ratings service, which will include around 3,000 facilities. Consumers will be able to see a graph showing how intensely each hospital tends to treat patients, on a scale from zero for the most conservative to 100 for the most aggressive. Intensity of care is based on time spent in the hospital and the number of doctor visits, and the index reflects the hospital's handling of nine serious conditions.