METHUEN — Strolling into the cardiac unit at Holy Family Hospital, the top executive of Holy Family's new owner, Lawrence General Hospital, stood erect and listened intently as nurses in scrubs ran through their wish lists: more staff, more supplies, fresh paint — "a little lipstick," in the words of one nurse — to brighten up the floor. Dr. Abha Agrawal assured the overburdened staff that she'd begun hiring and restocking supply cabinets in the post-Steward Health Care era. She said she'd directed her maintenance staff to replace damaged shades in the windows of rooms so patients can sleep, a complaint she'd heard on a previous visit to her expanded domain. She also had a question for the nurses, and a lesson to impart. She asked them who their boss was — and promptly answered her own question. "The patient is the boss," she said. "I say that everywhere I go."
Pro-Palestinian employees at Massachusetts General Hospital canceled a "Vigil for Palestine" scheduled to be held outside the hospital on Wednesday after a top administrator insisted it be renamed a "Vigil for Peace" and moved indoors. Anna Brown, a senior vice president and chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer for the hospital's parent organization, Mass General Brigham, emailed organizers of the vigil to say that an online flyer advertising the event planned on the campus's Bulfinch Lawn needed to be reworded. In addition to announcing that a "Silent Vigil for Palestine" was to take place Wednesday afternoon for 15 minutes, the flyer, shared on a listserv for MGH employees interested in social justice, said, "Not another child. Not another hospital. Not another bomb." Brown objected to all wording that linked the event to Israel's military campaign in Gaza.
Since older adults have been more severely affected by acute COVID-19, researchers have hypothesized that older adults may have worse long COVID symptoms as well. But according to new research published in the Annals of Neurology, an official journal of the American Neurological Association, Northwestern Medicine researchers found on an average of 10 months after COVID-19 onset, younger (ages 18-44) and middle-aged (ages 45-64) adults had worse neurologic symptoms of long COVID than adults 65 and older.
In an industry overburdened by regulatory requirements and financial constraints, patient experience often takes a backseat. Many healthcare providers are caught in a cycle of reactive care, treating symptoms rather than addressing the underlying causes of inefficiency. Patients often wait weeks for essential test results, if they receive them at all.
Now that electronic health records are ubiquitous, why does every other industry still leave healthcare in the dust when it comes to personalization? Nobody knows more about us than our healthcare providers, but they don't often leverage that electronic information to help their patients — or themselves. What will it take to make healthcare at least as personalized as our Amazon product recommendations?
A New York hospital says it has performed the first fully robotic double lung transplant. The procedure is aimed at speeding up the healing process and shortening hospital stays. It builds on other minimally invasive procedures; back in 2022, Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles completed a partially robotic single lung transfer. And here at the NYU Langone Health Center on the East Side of Manhattan, doctors announced in September that they had performed the first fully robotic single lung transplant. The double lung procedure was conducted on 57-year-old resident of upstate New York, Cheryl Mehrkar, on Oct. 22.