Quality and Safety

In an effort to get or keep a good performance rating from the federal government, transplant centers have been labeling some patients "too sick to transplant" and dropping from the waitlist some who may been viable candidates, researchers found. In addition, despite removing more sick patients from the waiting list, one-year survival rates for patients who received transplants didn't improve.

A Connecticut podiatry office has notified 40,491 patients that cybercriminals may have compromised their protected health information by accessing its EHR database.

A national project called the Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program, funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, has significantly helped to reduce catheter-associated urinary tract infections in hospitals, according to a study published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

With research increasingly highlighting the link between sleep and good health, children's hospitals are rethinking just how they work at night.

A recent study published in JAMA suggests the gap in quality between critical access hospitals and non-critical access hospitals may not be as wide as originally thought.

An analysis of more than 4,100 U.S. hospitals shows less than 40 percent have the recommended stewardship programs in place to guide the use of antibiotics for patient care.

This prototype machine produces 1,000 pills in 24 hours, faster than it can take to produce some batches in a factory. Allan Myerson, a professor of chemical engineering at MIT and a leader of the effort, says it could become eventually an option for anyone who makes medications, which typically require a lengthy and complex process of crystallization.

Alerts Tracker, which augments its Automatch platform, automatically identifies equipment models and supplies within a healthcare facility's inventory that are impacted by an alert or recall, and notifies designated department staff.

The problems were traced to the compounding pharmacy lab at Paradise Valley Hospital in National City, California, where inspectors found "dust, stains and foreign material" in a supposedly sterile environment in which thousands of intravenous medications were prepared over eight months -- from Jan. 1 to Aug. 18.

The Senate on Tuesday approved $1.1 billion to fund the fight against the Zika virus, a figure short of the $1.9 billion requested by President Barack Obama.