Dail-eNews from MDSI

CDC: 1 in 4 US adults live with a disability
According to a recent CDC Weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report, one in 4 U.S. adults (61 million Americans) have a disability that impacts major life activities, according to a report in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The most common disability type, mobility, affects 1 in 7 adults. With age, disability becomes more common, affecting about 2 in 5 adults age 65 and older. Using data from the 2016 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), this is the first CDC report of the percentage of adults across six disability types:
• Mobility (serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs)
• Cognition (serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions)
• Hearing (serious difficulty hearing)
• Vision (serious difficulty seeing)
• Independent living (difficulty doing errands alone)
• Self-care (difficulty dressing or bathing)
These data show that disability is more common among women, non-Hispanic American Indians/Alaska Natives, adults with lower income, and adults living in the South Census region of the United States. Click here to learn more.

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Distributor News

CME named a top performing supplier by Attainia
CME Corp (CME) (Warwick, RI) was recognized by Attainia for its outstanding performance. The recognition highlights Attainia suppliers that have worked with the Attainia planning community to choose the capital equipment that healthcare providers and facilitators use to deliver advanced and high-quality care. CME was one of 13 companies ranked on the elite national list. CME is a comprehensive healthcare equipment and turn-key logistics company providing personalized support and service. Representing more than 1,000 hospitals, Attainia is a leading planning and budgeting company in the healthcare equipment sector. It recognizes its supply partners based on their ability to provide the most innovations and best standard of care for communities.

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Manufacturer News

Medtronic announces commercial launch of IN.PACT Admiral drug-coated balloon in Japan
Medtronic plc (Dublin, Ireland) announced full commercial launch of the IN.PACT Admiral Drug-Coated Balloon (DCB) in Japan. The news follows the completion of a post-market clinical trial, which enrolled 300 subjects. IN.PACT Admiral received approval last year from the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) for the treatment of peripheral artery disease (PAD) in the upper leg - specifically, in the thigh (superficial femoral arteries), and behind the knee (popliteal arteries). The MHLW also granted reimbursement approval for the IN.PACT Admiral in December of 2017.

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Siemens Healthineers releases white paper: "Reducing Unwarranted Variation: Increasing the Value of Care"
“Unwarranted variation in healthcare has been on the radar of providers, payers and policymakers for over 40 years. The term refers to variation in medical practices that cannot be explained by illness, medical need, patient preferences or the recommendations of evidence-based medicine. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence about the existence of unwarranted variation…
“Numerous studies have been published exploring the scope and scale of variation in care provision. However, research is less clear on how successful the next step—the attempted reduction of variation—has been, and whether reduction in variation has been seen to improve patient outcomes. We set out to review the recent evidence regarding the effectiveness of attempts to reduce unwarranted variation in healthcare settings, with a particular focus on interventions at the hospital level.
“Our rapid review focused on the most reliable, high-quality literature from the past five years, focusing on controlled studies where they existed. We reviewed evidence on the approaches taken to reduce variation and how successful they have been… We describe below the key findings and provide some recommendations on how organizations can move beyond merely identifying variation and take action to reduce…” (Click here to continue reading)

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Tips for Greater Success

Whose Fault Is It?
In this week’s Tips for Greater Success, Dan Nielsen, founder of AmericasHealthcareLeaders.com and NIHCL.com, writes, "Last week I wrote about W. Edwards Deming and his management philosophy that can essentially be summed up as “focus on fixing the system, not the person.” The article was very well received, and of the dozens of comments, almost all voiced strong support of this philosophy.
"However, there were also many people who disagreed to some degree, arguing that in some cases the person—not the process—really is at fault. I believe their point is completely valid. Having served in healthcare leadership for over 45 years, I’ve experienced more than a few situations where I would say the problem had more to do with the person than the process!
"But I still wouldn’t place the bulk of the blame on the employee in question; I believe more often than not the management and the processes in place are more to blame for..." (Click here to continue reading)

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Government News

FDA approves first generic version of EpiPen
The FDA approved the first generic competitor to Mylan's EpiPen. Teva Pharmaceuticals, the largest generic drugmaker in the US, received FDA approval for its generic versions of both EpiPen and EpiPen Jr. Teva's initial application for its generic version of EpiPen was rejected by the FDA in 2016. The products are auto-injectors for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including those that are life-threatening. The approval will bring competition to Mylan's EpiPen, which has received harsh public criticism over its cost. In 2016, Mylan introduced its own generic version of EpiPen after a public outcry over the branded version's price, which jumped more than 450% since 2004. The generic version costs $300 for a two-pack, compared to the brand-name version which costs more than $600.

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Hospital and IDN News

SSM Health to sell 3 hospitals
SSM Health (St. Louis, MO) signed letters of intent to sell St. Mary's Hospital-Jefferson City (Jefferson City, MO) and SSM Health St. Mary's Hospital-Audrain (Mexico, MO) to University of Missouri Health Care (Columbia, MO). The deal would also include SSM's outpatient, home care, hospice and medical group locations throughout the region. SSM also signed a letter of intent to sell SSM Health St. Francis Hospital-Maryville (Maryville, MO) and its affiliated operations to Mosaic Life Care (St. Joseph, MO). The terms of and a timeline for the transactions are still being finalized.

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St. John's Riverside Hospital to explore joining Montefiore Health System
Montefiore Health System (Bronx, NY) and its clinical affiliate St. John's Riverside Hospital (Yonkers, NY), are in talks for St. John's to formally join Montefiore. Montefiore is an 11-hospital system with a primary and specialty care network of more than 180 locations. St. John's serves the residents of Yonkers and southern Westchester County with a staff of more than 450 physicians.

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Huntsville Hospital to build $150M, 72-bed patient tower
Huntsville Hospital (Huntsville, AL) plans to invest $150 million in a new 72-bed patient tower. The West Bed Tower, which will feature 24 operating rooms in addition to the patient beds, will be constructed across the street from the hospital's main entrance. The two structures will be connected by an elevated walkway. Construction is expected to take two years.

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News of the Weird

Man with the world's longest fingernails cuts them off after 66 years
The man with the world's longest fingernails has finally cut them off. Shridhar Chillal of Pune, India, started to let the fingernails on his left hand grow when he was 14 "after being told off by a teacher for accidentally breaking his long nail," according to Guinness World Records. He's now 82. And he holds the record for the longest fingernails on a single hand. Chillal flew to the US and had his nails cut off using a small circular saw at a ceremony Wednesday in New York. The Ripley's Believe It or Not! museum in Times Square has put them on display. Just how long are the nails, exactly? The longest one is the thumbnail, which Guinness says is 197.8 centimeters — or about 6 1/2 feet long. "When last measured, his nails had a combined length of 909.6 cm (29 ft 10.1 in), about the same length as a London bus," according to Guinness. Chillal's unusual choice to grow his nails out this long didn't stop him from leading a normal life, the Ripley's museum says. He married, had two children and worked professionally as a photographer. But the decision to grow his nails so long did take a toll — Chillal cannot open his left hand from a closed position or flex his fingers, the museum says. The museum has interviews with Chillal and some of his family on its website.

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Woman gets contact lens stuck in eye for 28 years
A 42-year-old woman in Great Britain lost a lens when she was a teen, only to have doctors discover it embedded in her eye 28 years later. According to the medical journal BMJ Case Reports, the patient went to the doctor after she discovered a pea-sized lump below her left eyebrow. The cyst was visible on an MRI and cause the woman’s left eyelid to droop, according to CNN. When doctors went in to remove the cyst, they discovered a rigid contact lens that somehow migrated into the eyelid, according to USA Today. At first, the woman couldn’t recall how the contact lens got stuck in her peepers. Then her mom remembered the patient losing a lens during a badminton game when the patient was just 14. Since the woman had no symptoms, she figured the lens had simply fallen out and gone missing. “The patient never wore [rigid gas-permeable] lenses following this incident. We can infer that the RGP lens migrated into the patient’s left upper eyelid at the time of trauma and had been in situ for the last 28 years,” the authors said in their report. Once the cyst and the lens were removed from the woman’s eyes, her eyes went back to normal. This isn’t the only bizarre eye injury. In late 2016, a 67-year-old British woman went in for cataracts surgery only to discover the “blueish mass” in one of her eyes was actually 27 contact lenses.

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