Ohio-based health system Catholic Healthcare Partners ranked fifth for quality care in a recent study published in the Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety. The report compared 73 hospital systems using data publicly reported by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The study included systems with six or more acute-care hospitals and examined data on 19 quality indicators.
As more immigrants to Greater Boston have created a higher demand for medical interpreters, the profession is racing to catch up.
Now a Boston-based group, the International Medical Interpreters Association, is pushing for a national certification program. The goal is to standardize the profession in medicine, which is the fastest-growing of all interpreter fields.
For thousands of residents of South Los Angeles who had depended on the large county-run King-Harbor hospital that closed in 2007, the past 10 months have been an exercise in cobbling together medical care. When King-Harbor was shut by federal officials, it became the 15th general acute care hospital to close in Los Angeles County since 2000. South Los Angeles continues to be one of the most difficult places in the nation to both receive and give medical care. Family doctors are few and far between, and the area is one of the hardest to draw new doctors to, physician recruiters say.
Biological, social and healthcare-related factors are responsible for the ethnic and racial disparities in results for U.S. patients with kidney disease, according to two studies. Healthcare providers can directly address some of these factors, and need to take action to eliminate disparities, say the studies' authors.
Reducing racial and regional disparities will be a major focus of a $300 million initiative to be announced by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The program targets 14 communities and regions around the country, and seeks to improve the quality of healthcare and eventually provide models for national health reform. Researchers say that one major goal of the project is to cut down on hospital admissions for certain medical conditions.
Although 4 million American women give birth annually, almost no one is developing medications for complications of pregnancy, including conditions that threaten the lives of mothers and children, experts say. There are so few effective drugs for pregnancy-related conditions, they add, that in many cases, doctors can save their patients only by delivering babies early.