As we enter the New Year, I like to reflect on where we’ve been and where we’re heading in medicine. By far and away, this is the most tumultuous time I have ever experienced in health care. Doctors and nurses appear stressed and downtrodden, administrators are running scared, desperate to seem "value-added," and patients are scrambling to get seen in these last two days of 2013.
Hospital Care
Improved ‘handoff’ communication curbs medical errors
Aptitude adds more than 100 hospitals to portfolio
Aptitude LLC said it inked a deal with the Northeast Purchasing Coalition for online direct contracting for more than 100 hospitals.
Aptitude is an online marketplace aimed at streamlining the hospital purchasing process by connecting medical device suppliers with their counterparts in the hospital industry. The company is a spinout of Irving, Texas-based group purchasing organization Novation.
TYRX wins 510(k) clearance for anti-bacterial envelope
TYRX won 510(k) clearance from the FDA to expand marketing indications for its AIGISRx N antibacterial envelope to include use with spinal cord neuromodulators.
The Monmouth Junction, N.J.-based company may now market the device as a tool to help reduce surgical site infections associated with implantable devices for both neurology and cardiology.
How will health insurance exchanges affect doctors and hospitals?
By Scott Howe
The Affordable Care Act (ACA)’s health insurance exchanges opened for business on Oct. 1, and, despite website glitches and non-stop political fighting, citizens across the U.S. can now comparison shop and pick an insurance plan.
Babies born extremely premature are surviving. How do they do in the long run?
By Tom Ulrich
Twenty or thirty years ago, no one would have expected babies born extremely prematurely – between 23 and 25 weeks’ gestation, considered the edge of viability – to survive long enough for their performance as elementary schoolers to be an issue.
But times change. Treatments like surfactants and prenatal steroids, along with improvements in ventilators and nutrition, have often enabled extremely premature children to survive.
Are pediatric patients being discharged before they’re ready?
By Scott Howe
Because unplanned hospital readmissions put patients at risk, burden families and add to the cost of health care, many medical professionals are taking steps to reduce them. To push the effort, new Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) rules impose escalating penalties that decrease a hospital’s Medicare payments if patients are readmitted within 30 days of discharge.
When the carrot is removed from the stick
The field of medicine is one of the most rewarding occupations out there. Few occupations allow such an incredible opportunity to directly impact the life of a fellow human being and see the amazing results of something you did. Few occupations are allowed inside the most intimate and vulnerable moments of the human condition. In a word: amazing.
But medicine for people has quickly given way to medicine for business.
Xenex touts next-gen robotic disinfection tech, lands $11.3M financing
Xenex debuted its infection killing robot, which utilizes UV light for disinfection, and touted a new $11.3 million financing round.
The portable UV room disinfection system "uses pulsed xenon ultraviolet light to destroy the viruses, bacteria, mold, fungus and bacterial spores in the patient environment that cause healthcare associated infections," according to a press release.
CareFusion inks $500M deal for GE Healthcare’s Vital Signs biz
Maintenance of certification in cardiac electrophysiology: Taking the stick
Shuzan, a Buddhist monk of the tenth century, once held up a bamboo stick before his disciples. "Call this a stick," he bellowed, "and you assert; call this not a stick, and you negate. Now, do not assert or negate, what would you call this stick? Speak! Speak!"