The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment is investigating CU Anschutz for its post-operation practices. CDPHE said it's addressing a public complaint about the hospital's cleaning and sterilizing of used surgical equipment. UCHealth vice president of communications Dan Weaver says the Sterile Processing Department is short-staffed and some surgeries have to be postponed. 'We have increased the number of staff members working in SPD to increase the amount of instruments being sterilized, and this volume of cleaned equipment is returning to normal,' Weaver says. 'Until the SPD is at full capacity, some elective cases will be postponed to ensure we have the instruments needed to provide all urgent and emergent surgeries and procedures.'
A patient in a South Carolina children's hospital has died of a brain-eating amoeba, according to the facility. Prisma Health Children's Hospital-Midlands confirmed the patient died of primary amebic meningoencephalitis, also known as PAM, a rare but often fatal brain infection caused by the Naegleria fowleri organism. ... According to the South Carolina Department of Public Health, the patient's exposure likely occurred at Lake Murray, though officials said they cannot be completely certain.
According to a new report released by Verkada in collaboration with The Harris Poll, nearly 40% of healthcare workers have considered quitting due to safety concerns and workplace violence. Forty-five percent of them said they're likely to exit the field within the next 12 months.
Physician groups are disproportionately filing lawsuits against people who live in St. Louis ZIP codes with high percentages of poor people and Black residents, according to recently published research in JAMA Network Open. The research found two physician groups – WashU Medicine Physicians and SLUCare Physicians – brought close to 1,000 lawsuits seeking to collect medical debt from patients between January 2020 and May 2023.
Brain aging may have sped up during the pandemic, even in people who didn't get sick from COVID, a new study suggests. Using brain scans from a very large database, British researchers determined that during the pandemic years of 2021 and 2022, people's brains showed signs of aging, including shrinkage, according to the report published in Nature Communications. People who got infected with the virus also showed deficits in certain cognitive abilities, such as processing speed and mental flexibility.