Under the Drug Addiction Treatment Act of 2000, qualified providers can obtain a waiver separate from the Narcotics Addict Treatment Act to treat opioid dependency with Schedule III, IV and V medications, or combinations of medications approved by the FDA for that indication.... Read More >>

The alternative to opioids (ALTO) program, developed at St Joseph’s University Medical Center in New Jersey, has proven highly successful at treating acute pain.... Read More >>

The FDA — along with the Centers of Disease Control & Prevention, representatives from the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) and other endoscope-culturing experts — has developed voluntary standardized protocols for duodenoscope surveillance sampling and culturing. ... Read More >>

Clallam County Public Health Officer Dr. Chris Frank recently authored a column on KevinMD.com on how value-based payments could potentially exacerbate health disparities. Value-based payments reward favorable health outcomes, but often health outcomes are tied to social factors, and Dr. Frank writes that this could make it a disincentive to care for sicker, less wealthy people. ... Read More >>

This week five members of WSHA’s staff, along with colleagues from Alaska and WSHA member Three Rivers Hospital, traveled to Baltimore to participate in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ annual Quality Conference.... Read More >>

More than 300,000 patients in the United States require mechanical ventilation as a life-saving therapy annually. Complications are not uncommon, as are increased lengths of stay, high health care costs and high likelihood of readmission. ... Read More >>

Addressing the opioid epidemic is one of WSHA’s top legislative and patient safety priorities. Together with our state’s Accountable Communities of Health, we worked to develop a template to expand access to treatment for opioid abuse in emergency departments, which is often the first point of treatment for those battling addiction. ... Read More >>

Acupuncture, tai chi, yoga, music therapy, massage and mindfulness, once considered alternative therapies, have earned the endorsement of a national task force on pain relief. Dr. Heather Tick, a clinical associate professor of family medicine and of anesthesiology and pain medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine, is the lead author of the paper calling for a reform in pain treatment.... Read More >>

Researchers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) recently looked at promising practices for improving hospital patient safety culture, looking at results from 536 hospitals during a 7-year period.... Read More >>

The American College of Surgeons (ACS), in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Medicine Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, has launched the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Safety Program for Improving Surgical Care and Recovery (ISCR). This new surgical quality improvement program is funded and guided by AHRQ.... Read More >>