By Susan Carr

The medical community has debated the value of sleep versus continuity of care since 2003, when the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education limited the number of consecutive hours medical residents may be on duty. (Organizations are required to comply with the duty hour standard to retain ACGME accreditation.) Research, however, has shown that making sure resident physicians get enough rest doesn’t insure safer care for patients, which was the main driver of the standard.

By Timothy Kelly, MS, MBA

The operating room is one place in a hospital where things are expected to run like clockwork – it is imperative that surgical procedures start on time.  When delays occur, the impact can be significant:  staff and equipment are underutilized, surgeons become frustrated, patients grow (more) anxious and optimum outcomes may be placed at risk, particularly if the prior administration of medications or antibiotics had been timed to the projected start of a procedure. It is thus alarming that a recent study in JAMA Surgery found that 10 percent of surgical procedures were delayed due to a missing piece of paper – the consent form.

Missouri Health Connection (MHC) has announced the grand opening of its health information network, paving the way for a new era of collaboration among healthcare providers to improve care quality, boost patient satisfaction, and reduce healthcare costs for all Missourians. The state’s physicians and patients now have one connection for a healthier Missouri, instead of having to navigate a complex maze of information sources to improve the health of patients.

The John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Awards are given each year by the National Quality Forum (NQF) and The Joint Commission to recognize achievement in patient safety and quality improvement and to honor the memory of John Eisenberg, MD.

Needle-Trap – a labeling solution featuring a safety mechanism integrated as a component of the self-adhesive syringe label – was recognized by the Scottish Business Awards as “Product of the Year” at an event featuring former President Bill Clinton as keynote speaker.

LiveData, Inc., leader in real-time integration and display technology, has announced that Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has expanded its deployment of LiveData OR-Dashboard™, adding the revolutionary Active Time Out® (ATO) patient safety technology to automate their Safe Surgery Checklists.

By Steven Pu, MD; and Steve Jackson

As more research points to patient and family engagement as the cornerstone of better care and outcomes, hospitals are returning to good old fashioned medicine to create healing environments for caregivers, patients, and families.

The longer a child with minor blunt head trauma is observed in the emergency department, the less likely the child is to require computed tomography (CT) scan, according to the results of a study published recently in Annals of Emergency Medicine.

As the next step in a partnership with the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health, has issued a Request for Applications (RFA) for a large-scale, multi-pronged clinical trial on prevention of fall-related injuries in non-institutionalized older adults. PCORI will commit up to $30 million to fund the trial selected through the application and peer-review process that NIA will administer.

Ventana Medical Systems, Inc. (Ventana), a member of the Roche Group, announced a groundbreaking study in the Journal of Histotechnology that indicates there is a real risk that errors can be made in the processing of patient biopsy tissue in anatomic pathology labs around the world. The Journal reports on the startling outcome of the Stainer Bath Cross Contamination Challenge (SBCCC), developed by Ventana Medical Systems, Inc., that involved 70 pathology labs from six countries across three continents.