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The beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic immediately changed how patients sought healthcare. This study analyzed the change frequency of diagnoses made in 2019 compared to 2020 in one region of Spain. On average, the number of diagnoses declined 31% from 2019 to 2020, with cancer diagnoses declining by nearly 50%. As COVID-19 cases continue to decrease in many areas in 2021, the authors recommend local, regional, and national public health leaders prioritize plans to target under-diagnosed conditions.

The Joint Commission issues sentinel event alerts to raise awareness regarding risks in the health care setting. This alert highlights physical and verbal violence as a major problem in the workplace, particularly in areas such as the emergency department and inpatient psychiatric units. Other factors associated with violence in health care settings include stressful conditions, understaffing, and lack of organizational policies for recognizing and deescalating hostile behaviors. The alert suggests numerous strategies health care organizations can take to mitigate workplace violence, such as establishing systems across the organization that enable reporting of workplace violence and developing quality improvement initiatives to reduce such incidents. A past PSNet perspective explored how a team at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center developed a process to improve workplace safety.

Using administrative data and patient interviews, this study sought to estimate opioid-related adverse events in adults discharged from one Canadian hospital. Among patients who filled at least one opioid prescription in the 90 days following hospital discharge, approximately 16% experienced an opioid-related emergency department visit, hospital readmission, or death. Longer duration of use and higher daily dose were associated with increased risk of adverse events. Results from this study can inform policies and strategies to limit opioid prescription dose and duration.  

This study merged inpatient discharge data with annual survey data from the American Hospital Association and found that private patient rooms were significantly associated with fewer hospital-acquired MRSA infections; however the effect of private rooms is disproportionate across hospitals. Hospitals with fewer private rooms stand to see the greatest decrease in MRSA infections from adding additional private rooms. These findings can assist hospital administrators making decisions about facility design and renovation.

COVID-19 transmission concerns have kept some patients from seeking needed medical care. This story highlights strategies hospitals are employing to demonstrate their commitment to keeping cancer patients safe, such as physical distancing guidance and plexiglass partitions.

This policy brief presents the American Geriatric Society’s recommendations for caring for patients with COVID-19 in nursing homes and long-term care facilities. Recommendations focus on the production and distribution of personal protective equipment (PPE), patient transfer between hospitals and nursing homes, public health planning, workforce issues, and payment and tax relief for nursing homes. The brief reflects federal guidance as of April 4, 2020.

Medical error is an important problem but there has been little examination of associated conceptual and normative aspects. This article explores the association between medical errors and adverse events, challenges current ideas about what comprises a medical error, and considers the concept of moral luck in the context of medical errors. The author introduces a noteworthy argument related to the differences in how we think of undertesting and overtesting and, by extension, underdiagnosis and overdiagnosis.

This editorial discusses how structural racism contributes to health inequities between blacks and whites in the United States, with an emphasis on cancer care. The authors propose three strategies for addressing structural racism in healthcare: (1) clinicians can make the invisible visible by examining disparities in their practices and exploring disparities in patient-level quality measures; (2) health care organizations can engage the community in an effort to change the accepted explanatory narrative, from one about biology or behavior to a story of a pathological social system that can be improved, and; (3) institutions can make systemic changes to eliminate structural racism by engaging in quality improvement efforts, educating healthcare workers, updating technical skills, and using patient navigators to connect patients to necessary services.