A study of admissions data from more than 136,000 patients over eight years showed that . Researchers suggested that hospitals could create specialized discharge planning for patients who test positive for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, vancomycin-resistant enterococci or Clostridium difficile.
Hospitals with the best heart attack survival rates have strong doctor-nurse teamwork, monthly meetings between hospital clinicians and paramedics, and a pharmacist on the daily care team. Yale researchers also found that fewer than 10 percent of hospitals nationwide use these strategies in their study of deaths after heart attacks in 537 hospitals from January 2008 to December 2009.
A congressman from New York has proposed a bill that creates financial penalties for pharma companies who fail to post clinical trial results at clinicaltrials.gov. Pharmalot reports that the bill would also withhold federal grant funding to any organization that does not report results – and require repayment. Read the bill here.
Another bill currently being considered by Congress would provide antibiotic developers an additional five years of market exclusivity for their products. Generating Antibiotic Incentives Now might be enough to draw big companies, small companies, and venture investors into antibiotic development.
Better charge capture and the ability to access data from anywhere are two of the main advantages of electronic health records. No guarantee of increased productivity and multiple steps for data entry are two of the big drawbacks that doctors identified in a Beckers Hospital Review post about pros and cons of EHRs.
[Image from flicker user Nathan Reading]
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
