Becker's Clinical Quality & Infection Control

15 INFECTION CONTROL & PATIENT SAFETY 13 Hospitals Warning Patients of Heater-Cooler Infection Risks By Heather Punke I n October 2016, the CDC warned hospitals that a device manufac- tured by LivaNova — the Stöckert 3T heater-cooler device — was spreading bacterial infections to patients. Officials urged hospitals that use the device to alert potentially affected patients. e following is a list of 13 hospitals that have issued warnings to their patients about the risk of nontuberculous mycobacterium infections linked to the device, which is used during open-heart surgery. Some of these hospitals issued warnings prior to the CDC's October 2016 announcement, as problems first surfaced in late 2015. 1. In October 2015, WellSpan York (Pa.) Hospital notified about 1,300 open-heart surgery patients. As of September 2016, 12 York Hospital patients contracted NTM infections. 2. In November 2015, Penn State Hershey Medical Center contact- ed about 2,300 open-heart surgery patients. ree hospital patients had acquired NTM infections. 3. In August 2016, Mercy Medical Center-Des Moines (Iowa) noti- fied about 2,600 patients who underwent open-heart surgery. At the time, two patients had been diagnosed with NTM infections. 4. In September 2016, Penn Medicine sent letters to hundreds of pa- tients warning them of infection risk. ree patients at Penn Presbyte- rian Medical Center in Philadelphia had contracted NTM infections. 5. In November 2016, Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., began no- tifying 17,000 open-heart surgery patients that they may be at risk of infection. One patient at the Rochester campus had contracted an NTM infection. 6. In December 2016, Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., started notifying roughly 1,500 to 1,800 cardiac patients of infection risk. As of Dec. 8, no hospital patients had a confirmed or suspected infection. 7. In December 2016, St. Francis Hospital & Medical Center in Hart- ford, Conn., notified approximately 3,000 open-heart surgery patients of infection risk. None of the hospital's patients had a confirmed or suspected infection as of Dec. 9. 8. In December 2016, IU Health sent 6,500 patients at its Method- ist and University campuses in Indianapolis and its Arnett (Ind.) and Bloomington (Ind.) hospitals. No patients had been diagnosed with an infection. 9. In December 2016, Roudebush VA Medical Center in Indianapolis sent notifications to 430 patients in December. At the time, no patients had contracted an NTM infection. 10. In December 2016, 800 patients at Franciscan Health's Indianap- olis, Lafayette and Crown Point hospitals in Indiana received notifi- cations. No Franciscan Health patients had been diagnosed with an infection at the time. 11. In December 2016, Community Health Network in Indianapolis sent notifications to 600 patients. As of Dec. 29, no patient had been diagnosed with an NTM infection. 12. In January, Charleston-based Medical University of South Caroli- na Health notified up to 3,000 patients of infection risk. As of Jan. 24, it had received no reports of actual infections. 13. In January, Spartanburg (S.C.) Regional Healthcare System noti- fied more than 2,000 patients of infection risks associated with heat- er-cooler devices. No SRHS patients had developed an infection as of Jan. 27. n 10k Patients Die Each Year Within 7 Days of Leaving a Hospital ER, Study Finds By Heather Punke M ore than 10,000 Medicare patients die each year within a week of leaving a hospital emergency room, according to a study published in The BMJ, and typically they were released from a rural hospital or a hospital with low inpatient admission rates. Researchers examined Medicare claims data covering ER visits from 2007 through 2012, looking at a nationally rep- resentative 20 percent sample of Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries. They found 0.12 percent of studied patients died within sev- en days of discharge from a hospital ER, which translates to 10,093 deaths annually. Hospitals in the lowest fifth of rates of inpatient admission from the ER had the highest rates of early death (2.7 per- cent), which was 3.4 times higher than hospitals in the high- est fifth (0.08 percent). "Hospitals with lower admission rates, lower costs and lower patient volumes had significantly higher rates of death after discharge, despite serving healthier overall patient popula- tions," the study authors wrote. Ziad Obermeyer, MD, an emergency medicine physician and professor in Boston, told STAT it's likely not provider error causing these higher rates of early death, but instead pointed to other factors like limited staffing and poorer hos- pitals and lack of transportation for rural patients to get to follow-up care. n

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