It’s official: COVID-19 public health emergency to end on May 11

As promised, the White House is giving ample notice—the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) will end on May 11.

“Various factors, including underreporting and not accounting for COVID-19’s role as a contributing cause of death from other diseases, mean that these estimates may understate the true mortality burden of COVID-19. The findings of this study underscore the public health relevance of COVID-19 to [children and young people] CYP,” the researchers wrote in their conclusion.

The recent study, which was published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, is based on survey data collected from 852 healthcare workers from January 2021 to February 2021. The survey participants were recruited from emergency departments affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and emergency medical service agencies in several states, including Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia.

One of the critical aspects of managing the security of your building is effectively “hardening” your perimeter, which to a fair degree means that you’ll have to secure some doors.

The Joint Commission’s time frame for evaluating licensed practitioners’ ability to provide care, treatment, and services has been updated from two years to three years, and is intended to better align with the standard practice of evaluating licensed practitioners.

OSHA has issued new enforcement guidance, allowing “instance-by-instance” citations for “high-gravity” serious violations of several agency standards.

As practitioners, we don’t always have the privilege to determine what is ethical or not. That is why most fiduciary bodies of medicine, law, clergy, and many others have ethical standards for their membership. In fact, most of these organizations have the power to remove members if they fail to meet certain criteria.

The Joint Commission (TJC) has several updated antibiotic stewardship elements of performance (EP) that took effect on January 1, 2023. These EPs include requirements to have an antibiotic stewardship committee, someone to head the committee that then oversees selection of evidence-based guidelines (EBG), and a plan to turn data into action.