brigham and women news from FierceHealthcare

If new regulations proposed by Massachusetts health authorities are approved, future hospitals and nursing home building projects would have to be environmentally friendly to win state approval. If... Read more...

> Once a common practice at nursing homes across the country, physical restraints now are becoming a thing of the past. Read more...

In a move that's becoming more common every day, influential Boston hospital Brigham and Women's has set plans to build a new wing providing family sleeping areas in all of the rooms, including its... Read more...

> A new study concludes that while ED physicians are prescribing narcotics more often, minorities are less likely to get them than whites. Read more...

It was kudos all around this week for the University of Kansas Hospital, which has gone from a state of financial and clinical crisis to being named as a top quality performer ranked with some of the... Read more...

In theory, instructions on how to take a drug are the most important part of its label. Typically, however, drug labels draw most attention to the name or logo of the pharmacy that filled the... Read more...

> Baltimore-area officials have begun to worry that the area's hospital building boom will make staffing shortages even worse. Read more...

More evidence from the "tired interns make mistakes" front. A new study presented at a professional conference suggests that extended shifts pose a threat to patient safety, not to mention the health of the interns themselves. Researchers collected more than 17,000 monthly reports from a group of more than 2,700 interns. Study author Laura Barger of Brigham and Women's Hospital then conducted a data analysis to see whether 24-hour-plus shifts were associated with reported medical errors …

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Often, patients get conflicting advice from the different specialists they see, in part due to competition for business. This is particularly common among specialties like cardiology, vascular surgery, cardiac surgery and neurology, where the lines between specialties have begun to blur. To sidestep this issue, some specialists are forming groups that serve the hospital jointly, with guidelines requiring all physicians to work as a team. Not only does this improve collaboration between …

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Hospitals that focus too tightly on cutting costs may create preventable problems such as medication errors and hospital-acquired infections, according to a new study by two Boston-area hospitals. To gather data, researchers studied four hospitals, including two urban teaching hospitals and two suburban hospitals, looking at 6,841 patient records over 12 months. The study found that when patient-to-nurse ratios at one of the four unnamed hospitals studied climbed 10 percent, the hospital …

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