Patient Safety & Outcomes

The transfusion of red blood cells stored for more than 21 days is no more harmful than fresh red blood cell transfusions, according to a study published in the March issue of Anesthesia & Analgesia.

Leonard J. Chabert Medical Center in Houma, La., has closed its labor and delivery department, including its neonatal care unit, due to budget constraints, according to a Houma Today report.

More than 200 national and local healthcare experts convened at the Naval Hospital Jacksonville Patient Safety Symposium in Jacksonville, Fla., last week to discuss patient safety, according to a Florida Times-Union report.

Research indicates that frequent reeducation of staff and multidisciplinary teamwork can significantly decrease central-line bloodstream infections, according to an Anesthesiology News report.

Washington State recently approved a provision within its Medicaid program in which it will no longer pay hospitals for any emergency department visit deemed as "unnecessary," and the American College of Emergency Physicians said this approach will put potential ED…

Greater continuity of care with a specialist and greater comprehensive care by a family physician were associated with less use of the emergency department, according to a study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Emergency department admissions for stroke among Medicare beneficiaries increased 2.2 percent while admissions for heart attack decreased 1.7 percent from 2008 to 2010, according to a study (pdf) by HealthGrades.

Post-stroke aphasia generates a one-year cost of approximately $1,703, according to a study in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Hospital emergency department visits are up in almost every hospital in the country right now, and implementing a capacity alert response system can help assuage the high volumes, according to a whitepaper from CEP America.

A recent study by researchers at the Medical University of Austria, in Vienna, in collaboration with Daniel I. Sessler, MD, professor and chair of the Department of Outcomes Research at the Cleveland Clinic described in Clinical Anesthesiology, suggests gargling with…