AllHealthcare

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Police were looking into possible criminal charges against a nurse at a South Florida hospital where officials say she may have exposed more than 1,800 patients to HIV and hepatitis by reusing medical supplies. Officials at Broward General Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale said earlier this week the hospital discovered that Qui Lan, 59, was reusing ...

SAN ANTONIO - Staff Sgt. Juan Amaris laid in intensive care recovering from life-threatening burns when he got a peculiar visit from his doctor. Dr. Kevin Chung - rather, a 5-foot-tall camouflage-clad robot with Chung's face on a monitor - rolled in to check on him. With his proxy's cameras zooming and wireless antennas beaming, Chung stood in a kitchen in ...

Diann Snyder has a simple rule at the long-term care home where she's director of nursing: Restraints are not an option. "If you restrain a resident, you actually see some desperation," Snyder says. "They experience some anguish. You kind of break their spirit. They give up. " When she joined the staff of the Thornwald Home in Carlisle, Pa., 15 years ...

CHICAGO - A government report says the rate of dangerous staph infections has dropped dramatically in hospital intensive-care units, a rare encouraging sign about a hard-to-treat "superbug." The report involving nearly 600 hospitals is the largest to document a long-term decline in the level of IV tube-related infections of MRSA, a deadly drug-resistant staph germ. The rate of MRSA bloodstream infections ...

Hospital workers at Alameda County's Fairmont Hospital rallied Wednesday to protest what they say are unsafe working conditions at the facility where workers say assaults can happen on a daily basis. "I can honestly say I felt safer working at a jail than I do here," said Valery Myers, a nurse at the hospital and member of SEIU Local 1021, which ...

GREENVILLE, S.C. - Shriners Hospitals, which has provided free care to children since before the Great Depression, is considering closing a quarter of its facilities as donations stagnate, costs increase and the charity's endowment shrivels. The group's director says it's the only viable option. Officials at the Florida-based organization say it is siphoning $1 million a day from its endowment to ...

In what might be a counterintuitive take on crowded emergency rooms, patients say the time spent waiting is not their top concern, according to a customer satisfaction survey last year of 1.4 million patients. Though decreasing the length of the visit would improve overall customer satisfaction, the report says, patients' top priorities are how well they were kept informed about delays, ...

CHICAGO - No news isn't necessarily good news for patients waiting for the results of medical tests. The first study of its kind finds doctors failed to inform patients of abnormal cancer screenings and other test results 1 out of 14 times. The failure rate was higher at some doctors' offices, as high as 26 percent at one office. Few medical ...

Many hospitals in state now use same codes for emergencies, helping reduce confusion All 98 hospitals in the state have decided to adopt new standards for patient safety that include "isolation precautions" to prevent the spread of infection. Hospitals in Yakima County have adopted or are in the process of adopting most of the new standards, which include color-coded wristbands, emergency ...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska _ A highway accident six weeks ago crushed Norma Daniels' neck, ribs and pelvis. For six weeks, she's been recovering at Providence Alaska Medical Center in a small room on the fifth floor where hand-made signs taped to the wall remind her how to swallow. She's become accustomed to the day-and-night schedule of the hospital, the jaundiced light and ...

Millions of TV viewers could tune in next year for an in-depth look at the inner workings of Massachusetts General Hospital. ABC News started filming at the Boston teaching hospital and research center this month for a seven-part documentary slated to air in the summer of 2010. The program will be similar to "Hopkins 24/7," ABC's Emmy Award-winning series on Baltimore's ...

PITTSBURGH - Baby Riley Matthews wheezed noisily on the exam table. "He's belly-breathing," the emergency-room doctor said worriedly - Riley's little abdomen was markedly rising and falling with each breath, a sign of respiratory distress. In most emergency rooms, the doctor would grill Mom: Has he ever been X-rayed? Do you remember what it showed? But in the new all-digital Children's ...

WASHINGTON - The nation's hospitals will give up $155 billion in future Medicare and Medicaid payments to help defray the cost of President Barack Obama's health care plan, a concession the White House hopes will boost an overhaul effort that's hit a roadblock in Congress. Vice President Joe Biden announced the deal at the White House on Wednesday, with administration officials ...

A woman's lawsuit against St. Mary's Hospital over her husband's death, which occurred after an eight-hour wait in the emergency room, is set for trial next year. In Pima County Superior Court, Judge John F. Kelly has set Sept. 22 as the date for a jury to hear Rachel Sweitzer's case. In the lawsuit, Sweitzer says negligence and reckless disregard by ...

GALVESTON, Texas — Hurricane Ike has turned the nation's top-ranked trauma center into a doc-in-the-box. "If we can't put on a Band-Aid or a splint, we have to transfer you or send you home," says Brian Zachariah, director of emergency medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston. "We can't even give traditional emergency care." UTMB's John Sealy ...

COLUMBUS — Columbus will provide a multimillion dollar tax incentive to a local hospital planning to add 2,400 jobs. Officials say they didn't want Nationwide Children's Hospital to take its expansion outside the city. At a meeting Monday, city council agreed to give the hospital a 15-year tax break worth up to $15 million. Over the same time period, the city ...

At suburban Detroit's Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital, patients will indulge in gourmet room service, stroll walking trails and take cooking classes. A former Ritz-Carlton executive is running the show. The description seems more day spa than sick bay. But hospitals are finding it pays to pump up the perks as they compete for patients who want a bit extra — ...

Hospital emergency rooms could use some intensive care of their own. Long waits. Patients spending hours or days on beds in ER hallways. Shortages of specialists willing to see emergency patients. The cause of the nation's ER overcrowding is obvious: Too many patients and not enough ER capacity. But it's not all doom and gloom inside America's emergency rooms. Some hospitals ...

NEW YORK — One in five Medicare patients end up back in the hospital within a month of discharge, a large study found, and that practice costs billions of dollars a year. The findings suggest patients aren't told enough about how to take care of themselves and stay healthy before they go home, the researchers said. A few simple things - ...

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Just nine people accounted for nearly 2,700 of the emergency room visits in the Austin area during the past six years at a cost of $3 million to taxpayers and others, according to a report. The patients went to hospital emergency rooms 2,678 times from 2003 through 2008, said the report from the nonprofit Integrated Care Collaboration, ...