Articles Tagged With: ICUs
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Mobility Improved by Adding Exercise Physiologists to ICU
Adding exercise physiologists to ICUs can improve mobility and patient outcomes, according to the experience of three medical-surgical ICUs at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center in Houston. The addition of exercise physiologists was studied as part of a larger bundle of interventions intended to improve the quality of care for ICU patients.
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Prolonged Empiric Antibiotic Therapy (PEAT) in Adult Intensive Care Units
Nine hundred ninety-eight patients admitted to 67 adult ICUs in 32 hospitals in the United States over a 24-hour period in 2011 were studied. Prolonged empiric antibiotic therapy was defined as continuing empiric antibiotics beyond 72 hours in patients in the absence of adjudicated infection as defined by CDC criteria. Three hundred thirty-three of 660 (50%) antibiotics were continued for at least 72 hours in patients who did not meet the CDC case definition of infection. Suspected pneumonia was the most common diagnosis in patients receiving PEAT. ICUs using invasive techniques to diagnose ventilator-associated pneumonia had lower rates of PEAT.
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PA partnership publishes IT recommendations
The Pennsylvania e-Health Initiative (PAeHI), a public-private coalition, has unveiled a set of health information technology recommendations designed to improve the quality of Pennsylvania's health care and reduce costs, while giving patients improved access to their own health care information.