Approximately one in 10 heart patients who underwent an angioplasty or stent placement procedure were readmitted to the hospital within 30 days and had a higher risk of death within 12 months, according to a new study.
Factors associated with hospital readmission included being female, Medicare insurance, unstable angina and others.
Thirty-day readmission rates have become a [...]
If a doctor owns the imaging equipment that is used to perform cardiac stress testing procedures for heart patients, is he likely to order more of these procedures even if they aren’t warranted?
A new study from Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. shows this to be true. The analytical study showed that patients treated [...]
According to a “Report Card” published by the Center to Advance Palliative Care, the nation overall gets a “B” grade for caring for our sickest Americans, up from a “C,” when the report was first released in 2008.
“The good news is that over the last ten years hospital palliative care teams have more than doubled,” [...]
Patients in the United States who receive permanent pacemakers and defibrillators are now at greater risk of contracting an infection over the life span of the device, new research shows.
Researchers analyzed data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample — a national database of hospital discharge records — from 1993-2008 and found a significant increase in infections [...]
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has cleared the first test for Staphylococcus aureus (S.aureus) infections that is able to quickly identify whether the bacteria are methicillin resistant (MRSA) or methicillin susceptible (MSSA).
There are many different types of Staphylococci bacteria, which cause skin infections, pneumonia, food and blood infections (blood poisoning). Staphylococcus aureus or “Staph” [...]
Advances in public health in this first decade of the 21st Century have contributed to a record low death rate in the U.S. and the continuation of a steady downward trend.
From 1999 to 2009, the age-adjusted death rate in the United States declined from 881.9 per 100,000 population to 741.0, a record low.
Contributing factors for [...]
Consider the scenario where your doctor has just given you a serious diagnosis or told you he had concerns about your results from a recent medical test.
Carefully listening to your doctor and asking questions about a diagnosis or test results are very important. But just when you should be paying close attention to what your [...]
The strongest medication-related safety warnings that can be placed in a drug’s labelling are not always consistent within drug categories, a new study suggests.
These black box warnings, as they are known, should be rendered uniform for all medications within a single class of drugs, according to a team of researchers from Greece and the United [...]
A new study shows that quality improvement programs at hospitals can help save the lives of its patients.
Previous research has shown that targeted quality improvement programs can reduce healthcare-associated infections, but this study is the first to link these programs to reduced death rates.
Researchers led by Allison Lipitz-Snyderman, Ph.D., of The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School [...]