Four years after COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic, the National Institutes of Health is sunsetting its COVID-19 treatment guidelines, NPR reported March 19. 

A recent study conducted by researchers in the U.K. found COVID-19 vaccines can reduce heart failure by up to 55% and blood clots by up to 78% after an infection.

The Joint Commission has revised several elements of performance for hospitals, including one that covers how organizations handle medical waste. 

The Joint Commission released a simplified breakdown of eight patient safety goals for hospitals in 2024.

At Mercy Health-St. Rita's Medical Center in Lima, Ohio, gone are the traditional scheduling demands for nurses. Instead, nurses get "creative shifts" that fit their needs, Cory Werts, MSN, RN, chief nursing officer for the Lima market, told Becker's.

A team of researchers at Cleveland-based Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine is urging the medical community to prioritize enhanced awareness and education on drug-resistant fungi as the number of global fungal infections grows. 

The CDC has issued a health alert as the U.S. faces a growing tally of measles cases this year, urging clinicians to ensure children are up to date on their measles-mumps-rubella vaccinations. 

Two new federal studies found no significant evidence of brain injury among more than 80 patients with ''Havana syndrome," The Washington Post reported March 18. 

A year after the federal government came down on fraudulent for-profit schools, some students are stuck in licensing limbo, the Miami Herald reported March 17.

The Environmental Protection Agency banned ongoing uses of asbestos, a carcinogen that is linked to more than 40,000 annual deaths, the White House said March 18. 

The University of Queensland Medical School-Ochsner Health earned a 99% match rate from the National Residency Match Program on Match Day 2024, which took place March 15. 

Some physicians are expressing concern that regulation around remote monitoring has not caught up with the boom of use in the last two years, KFF Health News reported March 18.

Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare has taken numerous steps to embed safety work into daily operations across its 186 hospitals, Karla Miller, PharmD, the system's chief patient safety officer, wrote in a March 15 blog post.

Healthcare workers and other experts are expressing concern over the CDC's draft masking guidelines, saying that, if finalized, the guidance would incentivize hospitals to prioritize profits over protection, NBC News reported March 18.

Fifty-eight cases of measles have been reported in the first quarter of 2024, the same number of total cases in 2023, the CDC reported.

In November, CMS placed a Penn Medicine hospital in immediate jeopardy for five hours after a possible preventable death. The corrections were published in late February. 

The risk of preterm birth was 37% higher for mothers involved in a phase 3 respiratory syncytial virus maternal vaccine trial than the control group in a clinical trial led by pharmaceutical giant GSK and researchers from Durham, N.C.-based Duke University School of Medicine.

The most effective chief quality officers possess a fluency in two distinct tongues: the language of people — rich with the nuances of human connection and collaboration — and the language of spreadsheets, marked by the objective precision of data. 

CDC experts are defending how the agency calculates maternal deaths after researchers from several universities have said the CDC's method inflates numbers, according to Politico's reporting.

AI tools might be able to diagnose healthcare-associated infections, but human oversight is vital to ensuring patient safety, according to a study published March 13 in the American Journal of Infection Control.