Quality & Patient Safety

More than 40 groups, led by the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine, yesterday launched a campaign to improve the quality of medical diagnoses. ACT for Better Diagnosis asks coalition members to identify and spread practical steps to help ensure diagnoses are accurate, communicated and timely…

Nancy Howell Agee: America's opioid problem is overwhelming – here’s how I keep hope and urgency to act More than 72,000 people died of a drug overdose last year – most of them due to opioids – and hospitals and health systems across the country are working hard to tackle the opioid epidemic,…

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar yesterday declared public health emergencies in North and South Carolina as Hurricane Florence approaches, and waived or modified certain Medicare, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program requirements to give health care providers and…

The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General yesterday recommended the Food and Drug Administration take additional steps to integrate cybersecurity into its premarket review process for medical devices. Specifically, OIG recommends the agency use pre-submission…

An estimated 49 to 65 hospital inpatient suicides occur each year in the United States, far fewer than the widely cited estimate of 1,500, according to a new study reported in The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety. Based on data from 27 states reporting to the National…

The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine has issued guidance recommending mandatory annual flu vaccines for all health care personnel in post-acute and long-term care settings unless there is a medical contraindication. The guidance also calls for unvaccinated post-acute and long-term…

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Aug. 2 issued its hospital inpatient prospective payment system (PPS) and long-term care hospital (LTCH) PPS final rule for fiscal year (FY) 2019. The rule affects inpatient PPS hospitals, critical access hospitals (CAHs), LTCHs and PPS-exempt…

Using and building analytic tools to improve quality of care, focusing on diversity and inclusion, and partnering with patients, families, and communities: All are part of the quality commitment at Anne Arundel Medical Center (AAMC) in Annapolis, Md., and Aurora Health Care (now Advocate Aurora…

The Food and Drug Administration Aug. 17 issued a safety alert after reviewing the final results from a post-approval study conducted by SynCardia Systems for their Temporary Total Artificial Heart (TAH-t) Companion 2 Driver System. SynCardia’s TAH-t functions as a bridge to a heart transplant in a…

Clinicians can apply through Sept. 6 to participate in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' Medicare Advantage Qualifying Incentive Arrangement Demonstration. Announced as part of the Physician Fee Schedule proposed rule for calendar year 2019, the demonstration allows clinicians…