Regardless of how much clinicians complain about their EHRs, if a hospital or medical practice accepts federal money to put them in place, it must prove it's using these electronic tools in a meaningful way, as defined by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The CMS is performing pre-payment and post-payment audits on 5-10% of healthcare providers, choosing some of them randomly and others based on a CMS risk profile of suspicious or anomalous data. It's easy to get complacent when there's only a one in 10 chance of being audited, but that statistic is misleading. If 10% of all incentive recipients are audited in 2014, another 10% in 2015, and so on, eventually your organization will be targeted.
A patient who contracted a rare bacterial infection during surgery at a South Carolina hospital died last week, bringing the total deaths to four since the outbreak was first suspected in May, a hospital spokeswoman said on Tuesday. The four dead are among 15 patients infected by Mycobacterium abscessus during surgery at Greenville Memorial Hospital, spokeswoman Sandy Dees said. Hospital officials cited tap water as the likely origin of the bacteria. Mycobacterium abscessus is commonly found in soil, water and dust, but rarely causes infection in healthy people, hospital officials said.
Johns Hopkins Hospital has agreed to pay $190 million to settle claims from thousands of women who may have been surreptitiously recorded during pelvic exams by gynecologist Dr. Nikita A. Levy. The amount of the settlement is one of the largest on record involving sexual misconduct by a physician. Levy, a doctor in the Johns Hopkins Community Medicine system for 25 years, took his life in February 2013 during an investigation that revealed he was using tiny cameras concealed in pens and key fobs to record patients. Investigators found more than 1,300 videos and images during searches of Levy's home and office. Plaintiffs' attorneys estimate more than 8,000 patients could have a claim.
A pharmacy supervisor at the VA was placed on leave after complaining about errors and delays in delivering medications to patients at a hospital in Palo Alto, California. In Pennsylvania, a doctor was removed from clinical work after complaining that on-call doctors were refusing to go to a VA hospital in Wilkes-Barre. Medical professionals from coast to coast have pointed out problems at the VA, only to suffer retaliation from supervisors and other high-ranking officials, according to a report Monday by a private government watchdog.
Hospitals are freeing up nurses to do the one thing they often don't have enough time for: taking care of patients. Swamped with tasks such as hunting for supplies, tracking down medications, filling out paperwork at the nursing station and looking for missing test results, nurses may spend less than two hours of a 12-hour shift in direct patient care, studies show. But research has also found that the more time nurses spend at the bedside, the less likely patients are to suffer falls, infections and medication errors, and the more likely they will be satisfied with their care.
On his first day on the job as CEO at hospital billings company Accretive Health Inc., Dr. Emad Rizk said Monday his first priority is to finish a massive restatement of the company's finances dating back to the second quarter of 2010. Rizk, in an afternoon call with analysts, declined to take any questions on the Chicago-based company's business performance or the timing of the restatement, saying instead he'd address those issues "in the coming months." Accretive has not released any data on its performance since early 2013. That spring, the company pulled nine quarters of financial statements because of accounting discrepancies.