Please join us and our friends at the Tigerlily Foundation for a Twitter chat on Wednesday, Oct, 21, 2015 at 9 PM Eastern time.
The hashtag for the Twitter chat is #ybcsempowered, shorthand for “Young Breast Cancer Survivors Empowered.”
Author: Greg Dennis
Team Spirit: A Vascular Access Team Is Placing CVCs and Arterial Lines – And Why That Matters
In
an earlier post, we detailed the advantages that both hospitals and patients gain when non-physician vascular access specialists (VAS’s) are allowed to place central venous catheters (CVCs) and arterial lines. Now a recently published article describes how a vascular access team at a large community hospital in Illinois expanded its scope of practice to encompass these lines.
New White Paper: More Options to Reduce CAUTIs
We’ve posted previously about the dangers of catheter-related bloodstream infections and the option of using safer technology to prevent them. With the emergence of a new, safer device for urinary catheterization, it’s time to apply the same logic to catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs).
The association between CAUTIs and the common use of Foley catheters is outlined in this new multimedia white paper. For results of a national survey of infection preventionists about CAUTIs, click here.
Continue reading “New White Paper: More Options to Reduce CAUTIs”
The Affordable Care Act and Vascular Access
How the ACA’s Pay-For-Performance Programs Target Catheter-Related Bloodstream Infections
The mainstream media has primarily covered the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (also known as the ACA or Obamacare) for how it affects health insurance. But as healthcare insiders, readers of this blog know there’s much more to this groundbreaking piece of legislation — including its provisions aimed at upping healthcare quality and lowering healthcare costs. Many of those provisions affect the practice of vascular access because catheter-related bloodstream infections (CRBSIs) have both quality and cost implications.
Healthcare providers should be taking a close look at these sections of the law because they can affect everything from reimbursements to materials management. Vascular access specialists (VAS’s) should know the provisions, too, because the ACA targets vascular access outcomes.
Continue reading “The Affordable Care Act and Vascular Access”
Study Shows Chlorhexidine-Impregnated PICC Eliminated Bloodstream Infections and Reduced Thrombosis
A study published in the Fall 2014 issue of the Journal of the Association for Vascular Access (JAVA) showed that a chlorhexidine-impregnated peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC) eliminated central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs) during the two-year study period (July 2011-July 2013). In addition, only one incidence of thrombosis occurred during the study period – a non-occlusive thrombus associated with device insertion. When the study ended, the good results continued: No CLABSIs or episodes of thrombosis were associated with the catheter between the end of the study and the study’s publication.
IV Catheter Is Found to Reduce Bloodstream Infections and Treatment Costs
A recent study found that a central venous catheter (CVC) designed to reduce bloodstream infections totally eliminated them at a hospital in Spain. The antimicrobial CVC also sharply reduced treatment costs related to the infections, compared to the unprotected CVC matched against it. You can read a study summary here.
The antimicrobial CVC in the study was the ARROW® CVC with ARROWg+ard® Technology. The catheter achieves its antimicrobial effect from a protective layer of chlorhexidine and silver sulfadiazine bonded to the catheter’s surface.
Continue reading “IV Catheter Is Found to Reduce Bloodstream Infections and Treatment Costs”
Expanding Scope of Practice for Vascular Access Specialists Can Improve Quality Care
Part 2 of a two-part post.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA), more commonly known as Obamacare, is 906 pages long. But amidst all that detail are a few driving goals. One of those is something few would argue with: higher quality healthcare at lower cost. That’s also the focus of a new white paper on vascular access.
It’s no wonder the ACA’s authors made that a priority. The U.S. lags behind other industrialized countries on both sides of the quality/cost equation. We have the most expensive healthcare, by far, among industrialized nations, according to both the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the healthcare-focused Commonwealth Fund. The U.S. also ranks worse than many of these nations on some measures of quality, including safety.
That brings us to Leslie Schultz, RN, Ph.D., Director of the Safety Institute at Premier, Inc., Continue reading “Expanding Scope of Practice for Vascular Access Specialists Can Improve Quality Care”
How Vascular Access Clinicians Can Help Hospitals Avoid Infection Penalties
At the recent annual meeting of the Association for Vascular Access (AVA), speaker Leslie Schultz, Director of the Safety Institute at Premier, Inc., introduced a provocative idea. Vascular access professionals, she said, can help their employers avoid the substantial financial penalties they face for high rates of central-line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs).
Schultz was referring to the substantial penalties mandated by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), popularly known as Obamacare. The ACA tries to improve healthcare and lower costs by penalizing hospitals that trail most of their peers in preventing infections.
Schultz has a keen sense of the contributions nurses can make to minimizing a hospital’s CRBSI rate. In addition to her role at Premier, she is an RN as well as a Ph.D. Premier’s Safety Institute offers free information, tools, and resources to advance patient safety.
Before diving into how vascular access professionals can leverage their expertise to reduce CRBSIs and the associated penalties, here’s some crucial background. Continue reading “How Vascular Access Clinicians Can Help Hospitals Avoid Infection Penalties”
ASCO Meeting Features First Independent Comparison of Breast Cancer Genomic Tests
The combined MammaPrint and BluePrint genomic tests provide more information about the specifics of breast cancer than does the older, 21-gene test, according to the first independent assessment comparing the assays. That study was among the major new findings about breast cancer molecular diagnostics – also called genomic tests – emerging from this year’s recent annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).
Also featured at ASCO were new insights about breast cancer in African-American women, drawn from research with MammaPrint and BluePrint conducted in the nation’s capital.
Together, the 70-gene MammaPrint and 80-gene BluePrint tests definitively categorize patients as Low Risk or High Risk for breast cancer recurrence and provide additional information about the specific biology of the cancer. The older and less sophisticated 21-gene test, on the other hand, stratifies patients into three risk-recurrence categories: Low Risk, High Risk, and Intermediate. Continue reading “ASCO Meeting Features First Independent Comparison of Breast Cancer Genomic Tests”
Does Infection Reporting Really Work? We Don’t Know Yet
We are now about ten years into the phenomenon of states’ requiring acute care hospitals to report healthcare-acquired infections (HAIs) to their departments of health. At this point, most U.S. states and territories have enacted such laws.
An article in the June 20 issue of the American Journal of Medical Qua
lity describes trends about enactment of the laws themselves and the type of data the laws cover. An abstract of the article can be found here.
Highlights from the authors’ research:
*As of January 31, 2013, the total number of states and territories adopting mandatory reporting laws had reached 37 (71%). Most of these laws were enacted and became effective in 2006-2007.
*Nearly all states (92%) that have HAI reporting laws mandate that data on central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs) in adult intensive care units be submitted to the appropriate state agency.
*About half of states (54%) require that methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections be reported. A similar number (51%) require reporting of Clostridium difficile infections.
Substantial resources have been committed to the reporting effort, both at the facility and state levels. That’s why the authors suggest that future research should focus on whether these laws have been effective in reducing HAIs, which is their intended result.
Consumers Union has long campaigned for patient safety improvements in U.S. healthcare, including the mandatory reporting of infections. You can stay abreast of their and other efforts in this regard here.
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