Compared to white patients, Black patients are 42% more likely to die following high-risk surgery and Hispanic patients are 21% more likely to die. Overall, about 8,364 Black and 4,338 Hispanic excess postsurgical deaths occurred between 2000-2020. To eliminate the disparity in mortality by 2030, there would need to be an annualized reduction in the projected mortality rates among Black patients of 2.7% and .8% among Hispanic patients.

Well (at least up here in the Northeast), it appears that the cooling season is rapidly changing over to the heating season and, (so it would seem) the advocacy season is heating up as well.

As cases of COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) continue to persist and influenza season picks up, the CDC is urging hospitals to check the efficiency of their heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems.

Robust authentication processes are often the first line of defense against cyberthreats. The June 2023 Office for Civil Rights (OCR) Cybersecurity newsletter emphasizes the importance of strong authentication in safeguarding electronic protected health information (ePHI).

If your facility doesn’t already have a sepsis program or wants to revamp its existing program, the release of the CDC’s new hospital sepsis program core elements marks a good place to start. Released on August 24, the seven core elements are aimed at strengthening survival and recovery rates for all sepsis patients. Sepsis is the leading cause of hospitalization and hospital mortality in the country.  

Living in Virginia, hurricane season usually has me thinking about lab disaster plans and the risk of a real natural disaster. In the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, the highest hurricane risk occurs between September and November. So far this year, a few storms have pointed in this direction, but luckily, they have all turned away. That luck won’t hold forever; the risk still exists.