Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1480010
30 QUALITY IMPROVEMENT & MEASUREMENT Higher COVID-19 antigen correlated with disease severity, study finds By Paige Twenter T he more SARS-CoV-2 antigens someone had, the more serious their COVID-19 symptoms were, a study from the National Institutes of Health found. Researchers analyzed 2,540 blood samples from study participants who were hospitalized from COVID-19 between August 2020 and November 2021, when the delta variant took over. The analysis found that "elevated plasma antigen is highly associated with both severity of pulmonary illness and clinically important patient outcomes," the researchers wrote. The study, funded by Operation Warp Speed and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was published Aug. 30 in Annals of Internal Medicine. Higher blood antigen levels also correlated with longer hospital stays, indicating antigen levels as a potential biomarker for future COVID-19 treatments. n How US News' 20 Honor Roll hospitals fared with CMS star ratings this year By Erica Carbajal C MS updated its Overall Hospital Quality Star Ratings on July 28, and 12 of U.S. News & World Report's 2022-23 20 Honor Roll hospitals received a five-star rating. Here are U.S. News' 20 Honor Roll hospitals ranked in order (including ties), along with their overall CMS star rating: 1. Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minn.) — 5 stars 2. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (Los Angeles) — 5 stars 3. NYU Langone Hospitals (New York City) — 5 stars 4. Cleveland Clinic — 5 stars 5. Johns Hopkins Hospital (Baltimore) — 4 stars 6. UCLA Medical Center (Los Angeles) — 4 stars 7. NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia and Cornell (New York City) — 4 stars 8. Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston) — 5 stars 9. Northwestern Memorial Hospital (Chicago) — 5 stars 10. Stanford (Calif.) Health Care-Stanford Hospital — 5 stars 11. Barnes-Jewish Hospital (St. Louis) — 3 stars 12. UCSF Medical Center (San Francisco) — 4 stars 13. Hospitals of the University of Pennsylvania-Penn Presbyterian (Philadelphia) — 5 stars 14. Brigham and Women's Hospital (Boston) — 4 stars 15. Houston Methodist Hospital — 5 stars 16. Mount Sinai Hospital (New York City) — 4 stars 17. University of Michigan Health-Ann Arbor — 5 stars 18. Mayo Clinic-Phoenix — 5 stars 19. Vanderbilt University Medical Center (Nashville, Tenn.) — 4 stars 20. Rush University Medical Center (Chicago) — 5 stars n leveraging technology, analysis, investigations, to have better mitigation programs against those four populations or categories of risks," he said. e four types of workplace violence, as described by the CDC, are criminal intent, client-on-worker violence, worker-on-worker violence and personal relationship violence. Workplace violence directors must understand how to mitigate risks for these categories, Mr. Stephan said. ey may also work across individual functional areas to create coherent solutions. "If your team doesn't have a single person to unify and work across those different functional areas, to eliminate gaps, or as a positive, create better processes and handoffs so that you don't have fragmentation, [it can be difficult to create] unity of effort," Mr. Stephan said. Mr. Concordia will work with site-based workplace violence committees and teams, which already exist at the system, that are multifunctional and include members from risk and safety, human resources, patient experience and public safety. He will bring his experience in workplace violence prevention tactics to unite these teams that may not otherwise have specific training in a given area. "What I realized is that for this program to be effective, we have to build it from the point of care up and not build it from [the security] office down," Mr. Stephan said. As more health systems increase their focus on employee wellness and employee engagement, Mr. Meisinger said he sees the potential for other organizations to make a director role part of their workplace violence prevention efforts. n