Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
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Keys To Controlling Ebola In The US: Travel Records And Infection Control
If you’re at all interested in infectious diseases, you’ve probably heard by now that a person traveled to the United States while infected with Ebola, was diagnosed and is now in a hospital in Texas...The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention held a press conference yesterday afternoon (transcript is here), and WIRED’s Greg Miller covered it...
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Killer Care: How Medical Error Became America's Third Largest Cause of Death, And What Can Be Done About It
...The following year, researchers shook the profession with an article in Health Affairs entitled “‘Global Trigger Tool’ Shows that Adverse Events in Hospitals May be Ten Times Greater than Previously Measured.” Dr. David Classen, who did the seminal research for global triggers, served as lead author of the study, which looked at three mid-size to large (ranging from 550 to 1,000 beds) teaching hospitals associated with medical schools in the West and Northwest that participated on the condition of anonymity...When different detection methods were applied, global triggers found over 90 percent of events, the government’s Patient Safety Indicators (based on discharge summaries) found 8.5 percent, and voluntary reporting disclosed only 2 percent (afraid of censure and malpractice, doctors and nurses seldom willingly self-accuse). Classen, et al. warned: “reliance on voluntary reporting and the Patient Safety Indicators could produce misleading conclusions about the current safety of care in the U.S. health-care system and misdirect efforts to improve patient safety.”...
L.A. County Patient Was Infected with Drug-Resistant E. coli
Scientists were alarmed last year when they found that a woman in Pennsylvania had been infected with bacteria that was resistant to colistin, an antibiotic that is considered the last line of defense against particularly nasty illnesses. It was a scary reminder that bacteria are increasingly able to survive antibiotics, making some infections extremely difficult or even impossible to treat. Now California is on a list of six states where patients have been infected with bacteria that contains a gene known as mcr-1, which makes it resistant to colistin...
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Let's Do Public Health Better
Eric Reinhart, who describes himself as “a political anthropologist, psychoanalyst, and physician,” has had a busy month. He started with an essay in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) about “reconstructive justice,” then an op-ed in The New York Times on how our health care system is demoralizing the physicians who work in it, and then the two that caught my attention: companion pieces in The Nation and Stat News about reforming our public health “system” from a physician-driven one to a true community health one. He's preaching to my choir. I wrote almost five years ago: “We need to stop viewing public health as a boring, not glamorous, small part of our healthcare system, but, rather, as the bedrock of it, and of our health.” Dr. Reinhart pulls no punches about our public health system(s), or the people who lead them...
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Liberia Closes Its Borders To Stop Ebola
The deadliest Ebola outbreak in history continues to plague West Africa as leaders scramble to stop the virus from spreading. Over the weekend, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf closed most of the country's borders...
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List Of States With Enterovirus D68 Grows
Indiana and Montana have joined the growing list of states with confirmed cases of Enterovirus D68, health officials say. Four children in Lake County were sickened by Enterovirus D68 and were treated at University of Chicago Hospital, according to a press release from the Indiana Department of Health; all four have since been discharged from the hospital...
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Livestock Workers May Carry Staph Bacteria From Pigs
Workers who handle livestock may carry antibiotic-resistant bacteria in their noses after they leave the farm. A small study of hog workers in North Carolina found that many carried staph bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus) and some carried drug-resistant strains of the bug, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA...
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Lowering the Bar: Medicine in the 21st Century
As many as 16 million Americans are prone to screaming and pounding on the dashboard when someone cuts them off in traffic. There are 14 million men with low testosterone, 9 million women with low sexual desire -- and tens of millions of people with bladders that are too active and blood sugar that's a little too high. The common thread: All have non-life-threatening conditions that for most of the 20th century were not considered a part of mainstream medicine...
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Mario Hyland Makes The Case For Continuous Interoperability
Interoperability has been a key buzz word heard along the road toward modernizing the American healthcare system. But standards, conformance to those standards, and thorough testing to ensure conformance are all required to achieve true, seamless information exchange. That’s the message advocated by Mario Hyland, senior vice president and founder of AEGIS, a consulting firm focused on advancing a health IT testing infrastructure. Hyland spoke with Clinical Innovation + Technology about current interoperability and testing challenges.
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Medical Records Reveal Deceased Texas Ebola Patient Sent Home With High Fever
Thomas Duncan, the first person to die of Ebola in the US, was released from hospital with a 103F fever on his first visit, despite telling a nurse he had recently travelled from Africa and exhibiting key symptoms of the deadly virus, it was revealed on Friday...
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mHealth Takes On Ebola In Nigeria
In what's being hailed as a "spectacular success story," the World Health Organization has declared Nigeria free of the Ebola virus transmission, with public health agencies and government officials citing a mobile health initiative as largely responsible for the triumph...
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Mosquitoes and Malaria: Taking a Big Step Against a Small but Deadly Foe
If you’ve ever swatted away a mosquito on a muggy summer night, then you know how annoying these winged pests can be. But in many parts of the world, mosquitos are not just irritating—they’re deadly. Malaria, which is transmitted by mosquitos, took the lives of 438,000 people worldwide last year. More than 3 billion people remain at risk of contracting this horrific disease, which is especially dangerous for pregnant mothers and young people...
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New Report: Top Challenges Facing HHS Includes Harnessing Data
In November 2019 the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a new report, Top Management and Performance Challenges Facing HHS. Divided into six major sections, this report reviews the OIG's observations with respect to financial integrity of HHS programs, value and quality, protecting the health and safety of beneficiaries as well as the public at large, harnessing data to achieve these goals, and working across government. The fifth challenge, "Harnessing Data To Improve Health and Well-Being of Individuals," is particularly foundational. Read More »
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New Tool Takes Measure Of Public Health
It has historically been difficult for public health officials — especially at cash-strapped state and local departments — to gauge whether their outreach and initiatives really work. A new tool from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Health Partners aims to change that...
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Next Wave of Entrepreneurs Arrives at HHS to Help Tackle Major Healthcare Challenges
Today, Bryan Sivak, U.S. Department and Health and Human Services Chief Technology Officer, announced the newest cohort of HHS Entrepreneurs-in-Residence. Part of the Secretary’s Initiatives to better serve the American people, the HHS Entrepreneurs-in-Residence program matches HHS employees with external expertise to work on a high risk high reward projects over a 13-month period.
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