Uncovering the Dark Side of Healthcare
100 Worst Hospitals for 2023
Unfortunately, not all hospitals are created equal, and some are considered to be the worst in terms of quality, safety, and efficiency of care. The importance of choosing the right hospital: Identifying the worst hospitals.
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Keeping Sprits Up
​​Virtuous Humor
Our jokes need to be rooted in ironic situations, clever word-play, and in our own flaws - jibes should not at the expense of the people we care for.
Hospital Cacophony
Hospital Alarms Torment Patients  
Tens of thousands of alarms shriek, beep and buzz every day in every U.S. hospital. All sound urgent, but few require immediate attention or get it.
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ICU Antibiotic Stewardship Initial Antibiotic Selection
​ Wrong Surgery
​​An Indefensible Error
Improved operating room (OR) efficiency often demands ‘impressive’ reductions in OR ‘turnover times’ leading to inevitable parallel increases in the flow of patients both into and out of the OR suite. In the midst of this ‘organized’ chaos, the potential for an unintended mishap is dangerously very real.
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Killer Weed
​Your Anesthesiologist Needs to Know if You Smoke Pot
One Colorado study published in May found marijuana users required more than triple the amount of anesthesia to keep them asleep while under the knife.
Hospital Leadership That Works
Parrish Medical Center
A public, not-for-profit, hospital located within sight of the launch towers of Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
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Pursuing Excellent Outcomes
Navicent Health
A mission that supports quality care and safe care would be a key ingredient that is fully embraced by the CEO.
The Worst US Hospitals
Which One Is Yours?
Each year, an estimated quarter of a million patients (up to 440,000) die from preventable medical errors.
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Physician Satisfaction
​Should Anyone Care? 
Doctors may enjoy the work they do daily, but dislike the way that work is organized, especially if they feel it impacts upon the quality they can give.
Hospital Hoarders
Wealthy Hospitals Are Hoarding During COVID
The wealthier hospitals face sacrifices that other hospitals might envy, such as having to postpone ambitious building projects or adding to their already large investment portfolios.
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Hospital Systems
​Understanding How Hospitals Systems Interact
Organization’s success depends on the managers’ ability to develop human relations, to admit and evaluate staff’s merits with whom he collaborates.  
Preserving Rural Healthcare
Northern Maine Medical Center
The CEO is leading Maine Hospital Association in Preserving Rural Healthcare.
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Inspiring Excellence Everyday
Natchitoches Regional Medical Center
Natchitoches Regional Medical Center- which is one of the 2018 100 SafeCare Hospitals.
Healthcare Leadership
The Current Fad for Hospital Power  
In healthcare, putting words like “authentic” or “servant” before leader, as is the current fad in many settings, might be thought of merely as ways to make the ironies of leadership clearer.
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Epidemic of Immobility
How Hospitals Do Even More Harm
Hospitals have become so overzealous in fall prevention that they are producing an “epidemic of immobility”.
Mind-Body Care
Coordination Might Save Money And Lives
Coordinating mental and physical health care presents business challenges because, typically, two different entities pay the bills, even within Medicaid programs.
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Shuttered Hospital
​Delay of Emergency Care
For more than 30 minutes, he lay unconscious in the back of an ambulance next to Mercy Hospital Fort Scott on a frigid February morning near an helipad just across the icy parking lot from the hospital’s emergency department, which had recently shuttered its doors.
Rural Healthcare
Oh, Where's It Gone?​​​
​​Poor rural Americans would be ill-advised to have a heart attack, or stroke, or sepsis. Since 2010, their odds of mortality increased by 15 percent for heart attacks, 10 percent for strokes, and by 8 percent for sepsis.
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Pain Assessment in Noncommunicative Patients
It Is Challenging
Assessing pain in non-communicative adult patients in the ICU must rely on the observation of behavioral indicators of pain.
Effective Hospital Leadership
Ability to Affect Change
Effective clinical leaders have been linked to facilitating and maintaining healthier workplaces, by driving cultural change among all health professionals in the workplace.​
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Decisions about Life-sustaining Therapies
Is There an Age Bias?
Decisions about the use or withdrawal of life-sustaining therapies are made every day in ICUs around the world. Shared decision-making has been strongly endorsed by critical care societies as a framework for making these decisions.
Securing Anesthesia Medications
A Possible Solution
Sedation and anesthesia providers are challenged with the task of effectively securing sedation and anesthesia medications from the time of preparation until time of administration.
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Family Presence During CPR
Beneficial or Not
The desire to have family present during cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) originates from 1987 when a family member insisted on being present during CPR.
Exemplary Hospital Leadership
Singapore General Hospital
​​The CEO led the hospitals staffs in a pledge of commitment to the Hand Hygiene Program.
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Paving the Road to World Class
Unity Health
Unity Health has become a haven for health care for multiple cities, counties, and communities in the American South.  
Effective Hospital Governance
Clinical Leadership
The importance of effective clinical leadership in ensuring a high quality healthcare system that consistently provides safe and efficient care.
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Hospital Patient Safety
It Rests on Communication
To be sure, the electronic medical record has done a good job of making us typists instead of communicators. Communication has never been more important. Breakdowns in communication can be deadly, or may leave the patient with “physical, emotional, or financial” consequences.
Interventions to Reduce Physician Burnout
What are the lessons?
Interventions that ignore the connection between quality of care and physician burnout are condemned to fail.
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Healthcare Workers’ Hands
Prevention of Hospital Acquired Infections
Estimates indicate that hundreds of millions of patients suffer from health care-associated infections each year worldwide.
Hand Hygiene In The OR
 Observations During Anesthesia
Hospital-acquired infections are one of the greatest challenges of modern healthcare. They cause unnecessary patient suffering and lead to prolonged hospital stays and increased costs.
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Hand Hygiene & Nurses
Why it is Important
The simple activity of frequent handwashing has the potential to save more lives than any single vaccine or medical intervention.
Debugging Hands
How About Hand Hygiene Surveillance?
​​​75,000 patients per year with Healthcare Associated Infections die during hospitalizations.
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Balint Sessions & Exercises
Interventions for Physician Burnout
Physician burnout begins to cultivate its seeds during the medical school days, continues throughout the residency period, and finally matures in the daily life of practicing physicians.
Teamwork in the ICU
Where do the similarities with Aviation end?
Parallels have been made between teamwork in aviation and intensive care. ICU teams are also reliant upon teams that manage risk, complex technologies, changeable workloads, and uncertainty.
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Stress Management Courses
Interventions for Burnout
Healthcare workers, particularly physicians, are exposed to high levels of distress at work. Persistent tension can lead to exhaustion, psychological, and/or physical distress.
Beyond Winning
Non-rational Sources of Conflict in the ICU
The admitting physician met with her family and suggested a palliative approach, making them very upset. The family insisted that the team 'do everything' and now they refuse to discuss any change in the plan of treatment.
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​Teamwork
Where do the similarities with Aviation end?
The aviation industry has made significant progress in identifying the skills and behaviors that result in effective teamwork. Its conceptualization of teamwork, development of training programs, and design of assessment tools are highly relevant to the intensive care unit (ICU).
​Beyond Winning
Non-rational Sources of Conflict in the ICU
Conflict is a common occurrence in hospital ICUs. Hospital workers and family members must interpret large amounts of information to make difficult decisions for incapable patients with life-threatening illnesses.
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​Communication Breakdowns
Haste Makes Waste
Having clinicians thrust into an emergency "hurry-up" situation should be a red flag that leads to recognition of the danger of such production pressures. In response, clinicians should slow down their pace, becoming more deliberate than normal as they complete the current task before turning to the new one.