Media Monitoring Report: March 3 – 17, 2016
Thanks to the tireless efforts of HM16 Course Director Dr. Melissa Mattison, the Annual Meeting Committee, volunteer speakers and SHM staff, Hospital Medicine 2016 featured the most robust course schedule to date and welcomed the largest number of attendees ever to attend an SHM meeting. This went hand-in-hand with extensive media coverage, which dominates this issue of SHM Media Highlights. Updates on antibiotic resistance, advanced nurse practitioner hospitalist programs and new opioid prescription legislation complete this edition.
In addition to coverage from The Hospitalist, Medscape was well-represented at HM16, including reports on multiple plenaries and breakout sessions. One story resulted in an extremely large spike in engagement on social media: a recap of Dr. Bob Wachter’s closing plenary address, during which he criticized the ‘7 on, 7 off’ schedule. On Facebook, practitioners shared their opinions on the long-term feasibility of the model. Because of the high level of engagement, the post was served to over 15,000 people – over ten times the average for SHM’s Facebook page. Hospitalist News recapped US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy’s popular keynote speech, among other presentations, and the Healio team also covered a number of sessions at HM16. Also noteworthy, attendees were extremely active on social media, with the #HospMed16 hashtag trending nationally on Twitter for almost 24 hours.
On the quality and patient safety front, NPR reported that while doctors have received scrutiny for handwashing practices, new research shows that patients often leave hospitals with C. diff infections because of their own lack of handwashing. Hospitals & Health Networks analyzed the implementation of an advanced nurse practitioner hospitalist program that led to improved patient satisfaction scores, more revenue and a higher quality of care.
Lastly, in public policy news impacting hospital medicine, a mental health reform bill and a few smaller measures, some of which address opioid drug use and addiction, recently passed the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee. The new measures would make it easier for people to obtain medication to treat opioid addition by changing prescribing rules for providers.
Media Highlights: March 3 – 17, 2016
Wachter: We Got It Wrong with 7 On, 7 Off Work Schedules
The wisdom of scheduling hospitalists 7 days on and 7 days off has been challenged by hospitalist groups nationwide. That challenge was given high-level validation when Bob Wachter, MD, widely known as the father of the field, weighed in. “It was a mistake,” he said to great applause during the closing plenary here at the Society of Hospital Medicine 2016 Annual Meeting. Dr. Wachter, professor and interim chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, along with Lee Goldman, MD, coined the word “hospitalist” in 1996.
March 15, 2016
Medscape
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/860409
(For a full archive of Medscape’s HM16 coverage, click here.)
Surgeon General calls for culture of ‘emotional well-being’
Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy called for a culture of “emotional well-being” to curb physician burnout and reduce the number of distressed physicians who take their lives each year.
“I think we have to have a focus on emotional well-being from the time people get into medical school,” he said during a press briefing at the annual meeting of the Society of Hospital Medicine. “We’re not just talking about trying to build a couple of intervention programs where people meet in small groups once a week. This is about shifting perspective in culture, recognizing that emotional well-being is an essential tool for clinicians to be able to do their jobs well.”
March 7, 2016
Hospitalist News
http://www.ehospitalistnews.com/practice-economics/practice-management/single-article/video-surgeon-general-calls-for-culture-of-emotional-well-being/ae5596d12ef942547bdad87e98254a92.html
(For a full archive of Hospitalist News’ HM16 coverage, click here.)
C. difficile onset increases in communities, decreases in hospitals
Community-acquired Clostridium difficile rates increased in the United States between 2010 and 2013, according to data presented at the 2016 Society of Hospital Medicine annual meeting. Although hospital-acquired infections showed an overall decrease, they were associated with higher inpatient mortality rates and other poor outcomes compared with community-acquired infections.
March 9, 2016
Healio
http://www.healio.com/infectious-disease/gastrointestinal-infections/news/online/%7B82ef2690-2eb5-4c63-9f3c-2b809c432e2c%7D/c-difficile-onset-increases-in-communities-decreases-in-hospitals
(For a complete list of Healio’s HM16 coverage, click here.)
Patients Leave the Hospital with Superbugs on Their Hands
Encouraging doctors and nurses to wash their hands frequently has always been considered an effective way to curb the spread of infection in hospitals and other health facilities. But a research letter published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine points to another key group of people who aren’t always keeping their hands so clean and probably should: patients. Researchers focused on inner-city Detroit and looked at patients who went from hospitals to post-acute care facilities — places like rehabilitation centers, skilled-nursing facilities, hospice and long-term care hospitals. They found that almost 1 in 4 adults who left the hospital had on their hands a superbug: a virus, bacteria or another kind of microbe that resists multiple kinds of medicine.
March 15, 2016
NPR
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/03/15/470514034/patients-leave-the-hospital-with-superbugs-on-their-hands
How an Advanced Nurse Practitioner Hospitalist Program Helped One Hospital
After the loss of several primary care providers, Rusk County Memorial Hospital, Ladysmith, Wis., found that call burden and lack of a hospitalist program are barriers to physician recruitment. By implementing an advanced nurse practitioner hospitalist program, this rural hospital was able to recruit more physicians, improve patient satisfaction scores, generate more revenue with outpatient testing, treat patients at a higher acuity level and earn a quality award.
March 7, 2016
Hospitals & Health Networks
http://www.hhnmag.com/articles/7016-video-how-an-advance-nurse-practitioner-hospitalist-program-helped-one-hospital
Mental health reform bill heads to Senate, still without funding
A Senate committee easily passed a mental health reform bill along with four smaller measures addressing prescription drug abuse Wednesday, but funding for implementing the programs remains elusive. Some of the smaller measures advanced Wednesday would allow doctors to prescribe more medication for treating opioid addiction and would create guidelines for co-prescribing overdose reversal drugs with opioids. The bill would make it easier for people to obtain medication to treat opioid addiction by eventually getting rid of patient limits for some physicians and allowing qualified NP/PA providers to prescribe the medicine.
March 16, 2016
Modern Healthcare
http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20160316/NEWS/160319909
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