Want to save your bosses some money and improve patient safety? Improve your blood transfusion practices. A study published in the August 2017 issue of The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety found that by eliminating unnecessary red blood cell (RBC) transfusions,...
While the deadline to meet CMS's new emergency preparedness Conditions of Participation (CoP) is November 15, hurricanes this August and September have shown why these rules are needed in the first place.
In a mere six days, Hurricane Harvey dropped 27 trillion gallons...
Maternal mortality is a measure of how many mothers die from pregnancy-related complications while carrying or within 42 days after birth. And in most of the developed world, this number has fallen to historic lows.
But not in the U.S., where the maternal mortality rate (MMR) has grown 2....
Want to improve your infection control? Consider your hospital floors.
A study published in the March issue of the American Journal of Infection Control (AJIC) found that hospital room floors may be an overlooked source of infection.
At a Roaring 20s party this summer, I saw a flapper in a sparkly dress dance with her service dog, a husky in a red vest. The woman was having a great time, though the dog seemed confused by the whole situation.
While it was funny to watch then, what if the next day she and her service...
The handles on the box springs of patient beds in residential areas. The caulking along the wall of otherwise-solid grab bars in showers. Any loops that might hold mattresses onto a bed frame. All of those and more have been cited as potential ligature risks by The Joint Commission and CMS...
Remind nurses and other clinicians to remain alert for medication errors, including mislabeled products, and empower them to say something if they suspect a problem.
After a customer complaint, C.O. Truxton Inc., a New Jersey drug company, issued a voluntary recall of a batch of...
Editor’s note: Healthcare innovation involves doing something differently than how it’s normally done, whether it’s a new device, policy, or program. Many of these evidence-based practices, promising studies, and groundbreaking programs are never adopted outside their test facilities. Many...
No physician or nurse injects medicine into a patient’s blood planning to make the patient sicker. Sadly, that’s exactly what happened to scores of providers back in 2012. This June, the former president of a Boston compounding pharmacy was sentenced to nine years in prison for racketeering and...
Physicians, nurses, and healthcare staff are in a unique position to help the human trafficking victims who walk through their doors. But for that to work, providers first need to know how to identify them.
There’s an estimated 1 million human trafficking victims living in America—a...
