Detroit Receiving hospital stopped surveillance of most surgical site infections due to staff cuts in 2018, including for patients exposed to dirty surgical instruments, according to a report released Wednesday that details why the hospital failed federal inspections.
The plane in which I’m flying to New Zealand is at 35,000 feet — cruising altitude over the Pacific, three hours out from Los Angeles. The cabin is dark and, other than the dull roar of the engines, all is quiet. Then the announcement that physicians hope not to hear comes over the PA system, “Is there a doctor on the plane?”
People who suffer severe strokes here can avoid the worst if stricken within a 30-minute ambulance ride to Rhode Island Hospital, the region’s only comprehensive stroke-treatment facility. Just across the Taunton River in Massachusetts, patients even closer to Rhode Island Hospital aren’t so lucky.
Two more premature babies who were in the neonatal intensive care unit at a New Jersey hospital died last week, bringing to three the number who have died after a bacterial outbreak at the facility in September, the state Health Department announced Tuesday. The two babies, who were infected six weeks ago at University Hospital in Newark, died last week, but the New Jersey Department of Health said it was not notified of the deaths until Monday.
A report of an active shooter Tuesday at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington was a “genuine false alarm,” a spokesman said. Naval Support Activity Bethesda spokesman Jeremy Brooks said officials at the Maryland base were looking into what caused the report.
In January, California became the first state to mandate home-based palliative care (care given to improve quality of life for patients with life-threatening diseases) to those in its Medicaid program. In California, that program is called Medi-Cal.