A recent study conducted by the Ponemon Institute estimates that poor privacy practices and the accompanying data breaches cost hospitals about $6 billion each year.

Based upon interviews with 65 health care organizations, this break down in efficiency results from a facility’s failure to encrypt, loss or theft of devices, and disposal of unshredded documents. The study was sponsored by ID Experts, which sells services to protect against and respond to data breaches. Some other findings included:

• A full 60% of the organizations included in the study had more than two data breaches over the previous two years, at a cost of $2 million per organization.
• The average breach involved 1,769 lost or stolen records.
• Senior personnel at the organizations surveyed felt unprepared to prevent or quickly detect breaches. Some 58% of the organizations “have little or no confidence” in the ability of their organization to detect all patient data loss or theft.
• Patients were the first to detect data breaches, report 41% of the organizations.
• Most of the respondents have either put in place an electronic medical records system or are in the process of doing so. And 74% of those with an EHR system say it has made data more secure. Another 12% said the system made no difference in security, 10% say it made data less secure and 4% were unsure.[audio:http://hospitalstay.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/05-Been-Caught-Stealing-1.mp3|titles=Been Caught Stealing]

Additional Source:  The Wall Street Journal Health Blog

A recent article appearing in California Watch contends that state authorities and hospital officials have failed to notify the general public about serious structural weaknesses at more than a dozen hospital buildings, including facilities in the Bay Area and Southern California.

California is focused on nearly 700 hospital buildings that were identified in the 1990s as potentially dangerous. The State’s licensing authority can revoke a hospital’s license – thereby shutting it down – if the facility does not retrofit certain buildings by the statutory deadline (2013 or 2015, and in some instances 2020). The article is critical of state oversight because it does not force hospitals to determine the risk of collapse.

The most current cost estimate for bringing all of California’s hospital buildings into seismic compliance is $110 billion, without financing charges, according to the RAND organization. … Read more →

According to a recent study conducted by the European Institute of Studies on Prevention (IREFREA), there are some disturbing trends about Spain’s young adults (under the age of 25). “Reports about young people being attacked or injured in fights when they go out at night are becoming increasingly common,” according to Amador Calafat, lead author of the study and a researcher at IREFREA.

According to the research, 5.2% of young people carry weapons when they go out at night, 11.6% have been attacked or threatened, and 23% have got into a fight at some time.

The research, published in the latest issue of the Journal Psicothema, analyses this Spanish phenomenon by focusing on night-time, recreational activities among 440 participants in the Balearic Islands, Galicia and Valencia. The participants regularly went out at night and consumed alcohol or other substances. “Having been threatened or hurt with a weapon was associated with having frequent arguments related to the use of alcohol and drugs,” Calafat explained. “In order to prevent night-time violence, alcohol consumption among young people should be controlled by offering water and soft drinks at affordable prices, steering away from ‘happy hour’-type alcohol offers, and strictly ensuring that alcohol is not sold to underage drinkers,” the study concludes.[audio:http://hospitalstay.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/15-Kung-Fu-Fighting-Studio.mp3|titles=Fighting]

Additional Sources:  Medical News Today

There are no medications that can instill empathy, and some experts in the area of mental health believe that psychopathy stems from a specific neurological disorder which is biological in origin and present from birth. Robert D. Hare, an expert in the field and author of the “Psychopathy Checklist” estimates that about one percent of the population are psychopaths. [audio:http://hospitalstay.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/01-Crazy-Gnarls-Barkley-cover-2.mp3|titles=Crazy]

In a recent study published in Psychological Science, two groups of prisoners, psychopaths and nonpsychopaths, were challenged with a series of problems based on three specific rules: (1) descriptive rules (such as, “If a person is from California, then that person will be patient”); (2) social contracts (”If you borrow my motorcycle, then you have to wash it”), and (3) precautions (”If you work with tuberculosis patients, then you must wear a surgical mask”).

The study concluded that while psychopaths performed comparably to nonpsychopaths on descriptive reasoning problems, they significantly underperformed in the area of social contract and precautionary problems. The authors of the study concluded that these findings may suggest psychopaths have specific reasoning impairments, manifesting itself in chronic cheating and impulsive risky behavior. According to the study co-author Elsa Ermer: “This work suggests that psychopaths don’t understand cheating in the normal way, so they might not realize when they’re cheating other people or when other people would react badly to cheating.” … Read more →

A new study from researchers at Wake Forest University concludes that drinking beet juice can help slow the onset of dementia in adults.  In the publication Nitric Oxide: Biology and Chemistry, the researchers contend that beet juice can increase blood flow to the brain.

According to Daniel Kim-Shapiro, director of Wake Forest’s Translational Science Center: “There have been several very high-profile studies showing that drinking beet juice can lower blood pressure, but we wanted to show that drinking beet juice also increases perfusion, or blood flow, to the brain. There are areas in the brain that become poorly perfused as you age, and that’s believed to be associated with dementia and poor cognition.”

The elevated concentration of nitrates found in beets (as well as other vegetables) causes good bacteria in the mouth to turn nitrate into nitrate.  This helps open blood vessels, thereby increasing blood flow and oxygen throughout the body. This is the first study to link consumption of  beet juice with increased blood flow to the brain.  “I think these results are consistent and encouraging – that good diet consisting of a lot of fruits and vegetables can contribute to overall good health,” according to Gary Miller, associate professor in the Department of Health and Exercise Science (and a project researcher).

[audio:http://hospitalstay.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/08-Vegetable.mp3|titles=Vegetable]The National Institutes of Health contributed funding for this research.

A recent publication in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology warns patients at risk of cardiovascular disease to keep their total dietary cholesterol under 200 mg per day. This may be difficult if you like egg yolks, which according to the study can contain 215 to 275 mg of cholesterol. In comparison, certain fast food meals can contain only 150 mg of cholesterol.

The publication was authored by Dr. David Spence of The University of Western Ontario, a stroke prevention expert, Dr. David Jenkins of the Risk Factor Modification Centre at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, a nutrition expert, and Dr. Jean Davignon of the Clinique de nutrition métabolisme et athérosclérose in Montreal, a cholesterol expert. According to Dr. Spence: “We wanted to put cholesterol into perspective, as there’s been a widespread misconception developing among the Canadian public and even physicians, that consumption of dietary cholesterol and egg yolks is harmless. Much of this has to do with effective egg marketing.” … Read more →

Hospitals around the country are starting to advertise their emergency department wait times in some unexpected ways. Notwithstanding the obvious fascination with watching an enormous billboard post such information, does this help or hurt a local emergency health system?

Some critics argue that a patient with a true medical emergency may travel further to an emergency department with a shorter wait time, irrespective of the triage system employed by hospitals to ensure critical patients are seen as soon as possible.  Others find this may deter “unnecessary” visits to overcrowded facilities while sending marginal cases to the emptier ones. … Read more →

The mind is a funny thing. When it comes to certain events in our lives, we tend to “misremember” our expectations in advance, therefore revising our conclusions after so we are consistent with our actual feelings.  Or so concludes the research appearing in the November issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, a publication of the American Psychological Association.

Recognizing that the process of predicting emotions is imperfect at best, but the idea behind “misremembering” these emotions may be somewhat logical. Trust in one’s emotional instincts could be “nature’s feedback mechanism to steer us toward actions that are good for us,” said study author and psychologist Tom Meyvis, PhD, of New York University. The study finds that human “ignorance” of this proclivity may help with motivation as we avoid what may appear to be “bad” and pursue that which is “good”. … Read more →

An “advance health care directive,” also known as a living will or advance directive, provides a legal mechanism for individuals to specify what actions should be taken for their health in the event that they are no longer able to make such decisions due to illness or incapacity. These instructions can prevent the need for anyone to “guess” what to do. By appointing a person or persons in this capacity, individuals can let their physician, family and/or friends know their health care preferences, including the types of special treatment they may want at the end of life, their desire for diagnostic testing, surgical procedures, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and/or organ donation.

Although requirements sometimes differ from state to state, on December 1, 1991, the federal Patient Self-Determination Act (PSDA) went into effect. PSDA requires health care institutions to ask all adults admitted as inpatients whether they have an advance directive, and to inform these patients of their right to refuse treatment. The PSDA and advanced directive regulations nationwide assume that patients want, need, and appreciate information about medical technological intervention. It further assumes that health professionals and institutions will respect those decisions. … Read more →

As part of an annual publication, Modern Healthcare recently ranked the top 100 health care employers in the nation. The following chart shows just one example of the interesting differences between the 100 top-ranked places to work in health care and all of the participating employers nationwide.

For more information about Modern Healthcare‘s “Best Places to Work in Healthcare,” visit the publication’s Website.