2 Stories You Need: No Value Care, Expanded HAI Reporting

Here are a couple of important healthcare quality and patient safety stories you may have missed but need to take a look at before calling it a week. (Sign up on the right if you’d like these news alerts delivered to you.)

1. Overkill
   “It isn’t enough to eliminate unnecessary care. It has to be replaced with necessary care,” Atul Gawande explains in this piece written for The New Yorker. Consider the impact of overtesting, overdiagnosis and overtreatment which Gawande terms as “no value care” and says is terribly widespread in today’s healthcare industry.
2. Hospital Infection Reporting to Widen, Definitions to Get More Precise
   Central line-associated bloodstream infections and catheter-associated urinary tract infections occur regularly beyond the ICU, but until now, hospitals haven’t been expected to collect data on the infections occurring in other units. The CDC and CMS say that a broadened reporting requirement and a clearer understanding of what constitutes a reportable infection will give more hospitals access to the tools and resources they need to drive quality improvement.