Half of hospitalized coronavirus patients have symptoms 4 months after discharge

On February 16, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) proposed an update to the agency’s Hazard Communication Standard (HCS), which would align provisions of the rule with the seventh revision of the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS) published in 2017 (86 FR 9576). An eighth revised edition was published in 2019.

Many coronavirus patients hospitalized with severe acute respiratory infection experience significant respiratory, functional, and psychological symptoms four months after hospital discharge, a recent research article found.

Gary Rogg, MD, an attending physician in internal medicine and co-director of the Post-COVID-19 Recovery Program at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, New York, says coronavirus “long haulers” can have a range of long-term symptoms. Those symptoms include cough, shortness of breath, anxiety and depression, cardiac issues, constitutional symptoms such as numbness and tingling, deconditioning, and hair loss.

As COVID-19 cases go down, your odds for on onsite reaccreditation survey might go up. While CMS is still limiting surveys in some cases, hospitals still may be subject to their regular onsite, triennial reaccreditation survey. And they will be unannounced, as usual.

At CHOC’s Quality Committee meeting in 2015, CHOC deliberately shifted its established goal from “reducing hospital-acquired conditions” to “achieving zero preventable deaths.” This goal became one of three quality domain factors that would determine annual leadership bonuses, thus further encouraging physicians to aggressively pursue it.

In case you missed it, here’s a roundup of breaking news from the Accreditation & Quality Compliance Center since Inside Accreditation & Quality was last published.