Quality and Safety
The law was a response to complaints from Medicare patients who were surprised to learn that although they had spent a few days in the hospital, they were there for observation and were not admitted. Observation patients are considered too sick to go home yet not sick enough to be admitted. They may pay higher charges than admitted patients and do not qualify for Medicare's nursing home coverage.
In the wake of the worst mass shooting in American history, and with more than 6,000 deaths already in 2016 from gun violence, the American Medical Association has adopted policy calling gun violence in the United States "a public health crisis," requiring a comprehensive public health response and solution.
Walgreens on Sunday formally cut ties with blood-testing startup Theranos and will immediately close all 40 Theranos Wellness Centers at its stores in Arizona.
Twenty percent of reporting hospitals lack a policy that conforms to all of the criteria in the Leapfrog group's standard for preventable hospital errors dubbed "never events" the nonprofit agency has found in a newly released report.
The state Senate this week rejected legislation that would have required medical practitioners to notify their patients if they were on probation for serious infractions.
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.