There's one story in Sandeep Jauhar's new memoir Doctored that I can't stop thinking about. Jauhar, a cardiologist in Long Island, writes about a 74-year-old patient named Mildred Harris who was "frail and virtually bed-bound." Harris had been referred to him for an examination prior to surgery, by another cardiologist who didn't have admitting privileges at his office. That cardiologist had referred Harris for surgery and needed Jauhar's sign off. But after examining the patient, he decided the procedure was too risky for someone so frail and called the procedure off. It happened anyway — mostly because it was good for business.
Federal regulators are reversing course and will resume publicly releasing data on hospital mistakes, including when foreign objects are left in patients' bodies or people get the wrong blood type. USA TODAY reported last month that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services quietly stopped publicly reporting a host of life-threatening mistakes, after denying in 2013 that it would do so. CMS says it will make this data on eight "hospital-acquired conditions" (HACs) available on its website. "We are working to make it available as a public-use file for researchers and others who are interested in the data," CMS spokesman Aaron Albright said in an e-mail. "It's been requested, so we will make it available."
Illinois will be collecting $16.3 million in penalties from 82 hospitals that had too many Medicaid patients readmitted to their hospital, the state said Friday. Having people return to the hospital for preventable readmissions can be a sign of deficiencies in the process of care and treatment or the lack of post discharge follow-up. For that reason, the state developed a policy for reducing these readmissions in 2013. The federal government also penalizes hospitals for Medicare patients that have preventable readmissions. Those in the Chicago-area that had some of the highest violations were Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Memorial ($1.43 million owed), Rush University Medical Center ($854,597) and Norwegian American Hospital ($661,888).
Health officials suspect that a rare respiratory virus is the reason that hundreds of children across America have been sickened in recent weeks, according to a published report. The Denver Post reported that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believe that human enterovirus 68 is at the root of the epidemic, though testing of samples has not produced a definitive answer. The Post reported that officials at Children's Hospital Colorado have treated more than 900 children for severe respiratory illnesses since August 18, with 86 admitted to the hospital. At Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children, doctors put five children on a ventilator this week, including a 13-year-old boy whose condition deteriorated from a mild cold to a life-threatening illness overnight.
Thursday's disclosure that hackers breached a HealthCare.gov test server this summer sparked more concern about the overall vulnerability of healthcare organizations and hope that the growing number of publicly disclosed hacks will encourage those organizations to expend more resources on securing data, networks, and systems. A hacker installed malicious code on a device that had kept its default manufacturer's password. As a test server, it was not supposed to be hooked to the Internet, said Patrick Peterson, founder and CEO of security developer Agari in an interview. Either keeping the server unconnected or using tools that automatically change pre-set passwords would have prevented this vulnerability, he said.
What's best for the patient? That simple question guided decisions for virtually every aspect of the new, $800 million University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center hospital, said Dr. John Warner, CEO of UT Southwestern's University Hospitals. Warner recently led the Dallas Business Journal on an exclusive tour of Dallas' newest health care landmark, captured in the photos attached. The landscaping is going in and medical equipment is being installed at the 12-floor hospital officially named the William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital. Groups of 150 to 180 employees and physicians per day are starting to train on how to use the building.