Differences in regional hospital readmission rates for heart failure are more closely tied to the availability of care and socioeconomics than to hospital performance or patients' degree of illness, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Quality of Care & Outcomes Research Scientific Sessions 2012. U.S. ...

iCAD, Inc., an industry-leading provider of advanced image analysis, workflow solutions and radiation therapy for the early identification and treatment of cancer, announced the first European patients have been treated with the Xoft Axxent Electronic Brachytherapy System.

(American Heart Association) Differences in regional hospital readmission rates for heart failure are more closely linked to the availability of care and socioeconomic factors than to hospital performance or patients' degree of illness. These findings suggest that new Medicare regulations penalizing hospitals for high readmission rates may be ineffective at ...

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced that Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island is among the first batch of organizations selected for Health Care Innovation awards. Made possible by the health care law - the Affordable Care Act - the awards will support 26 innovative projects ...

New research finds a strong link between healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) and patient readmission after an initial hospital stay. The findings, published in the June 2012 issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), suggest that reducing such infections could help ...

The United States spends more on health care than 12 other industrialized countries yet does not provide "notably superior" care, according to a new study from The Commonwealth Fund. The U.S. spent nearly $8,000 per person in 2009 on health care services, while other countries in the study spent between ...

The Cleanyourhands campaign was initiated in January 2005 across all acute NHS trusts in England and Wales after concerns were raised over high levels of infections and low levels of hand hygiene. Worldwide, the campaign is the first to be done nationally. A study published in BMJ, which coincides ...

The private sector company Circle holds on to the first £2m of any annual surplus it achieves at Hinchingbrooke hospital in Cambridgeshire. They will also get a proportion of any income surplus above that level with the rest going towards paying off the hospital's £40m debt. This means that Circle ...

(Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America) New research finds a strong link between healthcare-associated infections and patient readmission after an initial hospital stay. The findings, published in the June 2012 issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, suggest that reducing ...

The 2008 decision by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to cease additional reimbursement to hospitals for certain healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) has led to enhanced focus on infection prevention and changes in practice by front-line staff, according to a national survey of infection preventionists published in the May ...

The Society of Chest Pain Centers (SCPC) recently awarded Porter Adventist Hospital full accreditation status as a Chest Pain Center.

Removing a child's ruptured appendix sooner rather than later significantly lowers hospital costs and charges, according to a recently published study. An estimated $10,000 in hospital charges was saved when pediatric general surgeons removed the ruptured appendix within the first 24 hours, compared to the alternative treatment, called an interval ...