eHealth Use on Acute Inpatient Mental Health Units: Implementation Processes, Common Practices, and Barriers to Use.

Information technology to promote health (eHealth) is an important and growing area of mental healthcare, yet little is known about the use of patient-facing eHealth in psychiatric inpatient settings. This quality improvement project examined the current practices, barriers, implementation processes, and contextual factors affecting eHealth use across multiple Veteran Health Administration (VHA) acute mental health inpatient units. Staff from units serving both voluntary and involuntary patients (n = 49 from 37 unique sites) completed surveys regarding current, desired, and barriers to use of Veteran-facing eHealth technologies.

Polymyxin antibiotics for gram-negative infections.

Purpose: The role of polymyxin antibiotics in the treatment of multidrug-resistant gram-negative infections is reviewed.

Summary: Antimicrobial resistance is an increasing problem across hospitals worldwide, especially in intensive care settings, where nosocomial infections are 5-10 times more likely to occur than on the general wards. The polymyxins, a group of basic polypeptide antibiotics, were first isolated from Bacillus species in the late 1940s and appear to have a surface detergent effect, making them active against most gram-negative organisms.

Does increased access to primary care reduce hospital readmissions? Veterans Affairs Cooperative Study Group on Primary Care and Hospital Readmission.

Background: For chronically ill patients, readmission to the hospital can be frequent and costly. We studied the effect of an intervention designed to increase access to primary care after discharge from the hospital, with the goals of reducing readmissions and emergency department visits and increasing patients' quality of life and satisfaction with care.

Methods: In a multicenter randomized, controlled trial at nine Veterans Affairs Medical Centers, we randomly assigned 1396 veterans hospitalized with diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or congestive heart failure to receive either usual care or an intensive primary care intervention.