Excerpt – In 2001, I developed a checklist for health care workers to reduce infections from catheters, tubes that are widely used to deliver fluids and critical medicines to people who have been hospitalized. At the time, catheter infections resulted in approximately 31,000 deaths a year in the U.S, putting it in the top 15 leading causes of death. The checklist included measures such as washing hands and wearing masks. When tested at Johns Hopkins, where I worked at the time, and then adopted in Michigan, and overseen by a diligent nursing staff, use of the checklist eliminated almost all … Read More
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“[..] artificial intelligence (AI) is well suited to the detection and reporting of follow-up recommendations because of the large volume of imaging studies requiring screening and the relatively standardized language employed by radiologists in preparing reports. Natural language processing (NLP) methods, including text pattern-matching and traditional machine-learning techniques, have been developed for this task. In this article, we use the term traditional machine learning to refer to all machine-learning methods that are not deep learning, and these terms will be defined in detail in the sections that follow. More recently, novel deep-learning methods for NLP have shown great promise for … Read More
“Before the pandemic, most health centers did not offer telehealth visits for primary care or behavioral health, in large part because of reimbursement policy. In spring 2020, dramatic policy changes removed many of the restrictions on telehealth delivery, and health centers responded by standing up large telehealth programs. This sudden and dramatic change in health care delivery posed numerous challenges. Health centers had to quickly make changes to technology, workflows, and staffing to accommodate telehealth visits. To support health centers in these efforts, the California Health Care Foundation established the Connected Care Accelerator (CCA) program, a quality improvement initiative that … Read More
“Routine use of home-based symptom monitoring and management using electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePRO) to improve care delivery is on the horizon. Randomized clinical trials demonstrate that use of patient-reported symptoms can have marked impact on patient outcomes, including minimizing symptom burden, enhancing quality of life, reducing hospitalizations, increasing time receiving cancer treatments, and, in some studies, improving survival. [..] few health systems have successfully, fully integrated ePRO. [..] In the study by Daly and colleagues, the authors begin to tackle an important question of frequency of assessment administration in ePRO. This study used daily symptom assessment in contrast to the … Read More
“The insurance companies [Cigna and Kaiser Permanente] provided Ginger with access to millions of potential users. After its financial investments in Ginger, Cigna began offering no-cost access to Ginger’s behavioral health services in order to improve customers’ overall health and well-being, according to leadership from both organizations. Yes, it is possible that those customers will benefit from the platform. But given that Ginger’s valuation grew in multiples around the same time—at least in part because of the massive influx of customers from Cigna and Kaiser—it’s reasonable to suggest that the insurance company was double dipping. By sending its customers to … Read More
“β-Blockers and angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors/angiotensin receptor blockers (ACE-I/ARBs) are beneficial after AMI [acute myocardial infarction], and adjustment of these medications to moderate to high doses is recommended in the setting of reduced LV ejection fraction (LVEF) or heart failure. Initiation and adjustment of these medications can be challenging during hospitalization, particularly among patients with borderline or low systemic blood pressure because of an emphasis on shortening length of stay and the challenges in organizing frequent face-to-face visits early after discharge. Telemedicine has enabled the transition from face-to-face care and is set to play a key role in the post–coronavirus disease-19 … Read More
“Physician-assisted death (PAD) is now legal in 9 US states and the District of Columbia and is under consideration in 17 more. Legalization generally follows ballot, as opposed to legislative, initiatives in the setting of extensive marketing efforts by advocacy groups focused on convincing the public that they face a future of unbearable suffering if PAD is not available. Whereas fear of unbearable suffering at the end of life is a commonly expressed concern, most Americans should be able to expect reliable and expert relief of suffering as a result of medical advances in geriatrics and palliative care. The fact … Read More
“While overnight VS [vital sign] measurements disrupt sleep, they are often indicated and necessary for high-risk and potentially unstable patients. Identifying these patients in a reliable and timely manner is an area of active investigation, with efforts focused on models that vary from single parameter tools to weighted early warning scores and advanced predictive models using machine learning techniques. By contrast, relatively little work has been done to identify the low-risk cohort unlikely to benefit from such care that may, in fact, be harmed by these frequent assessments. Identifying this subset of patients has the potential to enhance recovery, improve … Read More
“Hospital at home (HaH), a care model that provides acute hospital-level care in patients’ homes, has been well characterized. Controlled trials and subsequent meta-analyses have suggested the efficacy of HaH, demonstrating noninferior or even superior mortality, readmission, and length of stay outcomes compared with traditional hospitalization for heterogeneous patient populations. [..] Reasons for low adoption include misaligned or lack of financial incentives and challenges inherent in implementing a complex intervention. For example, even when home hospitalization models have been implemented in the United States in study settings or those with aligned payment incentives, low participation rates have been ubiquitous (ranging … Read More
“Enthusiasm for the potential impact of AI [artificial intelligence] on hospital operations is often based on its impact in other industries. However, non-health care companies invest in AI after having digitized and optimized their operations with a variety of older mathematical methods. In contrast, hospitals may invest in AI while still scheduling patient appointments using fax machines and allocating resources based largely on anecdotal experience. [..] For decades before the advent of modern AI, the operational management of capital, labor, and resources of large manufacturing, retail, airline, and most other large-scale industries were being designed and refined with rigorous methods … Read More