Hospitals

November 20, 2023admin

Majority Of Gaza Hospitals And Clinics Shut Down: Palestinian Health Ministry

Of the 72 primary health care clinics, 52 have also been forced to close, it added.

More than 40 patients, including four premature babies, have died at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Gaza’s largest hospital, in the last six days, according to the health ministry.

Most of the intensive care unit patients, who were on ventilators due to the lack of fuel and oxygen at the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, have died, the doctor who leads the burns department at the hospital told Al-Jazeera over the phone from inside the facility on Friday.

Dr. Ahmad Mofeed Al-Mokhalalati noted a significant decrease in the number of premature babies in their care, with little hope for the survival of the remaining infants under the current conditions.

The hospital, which is Gaza’s largest, is grappling with a severe shortage of basic necessities — no water and no electricity in the main buildings of the compound, the doctor continued.

As a result, surgical operations have come to a halt due to the lack of electricity. This has led to an increase in suffering, especially among children who are now facing severe intestinal infections, a direct consequence of the unavailability of clean water, Al-Mokhalalati added.

And although he noted that Israeli forces promised to provide food, the supply delivered was grossly insufficient, catering to for only 40% of those inside the hospital, he stated.

The situation escalated when the Israeli forces stormed two buildings within the medical compound, with tanks still present in the area, the doctor noted. Snipers have been deployed around the hospital, adding a layer of fear and uncertainty according to Al-Mokhalalati.

Ashraf al-Qudra, the Ministry of Health spokesperson in al-Shifa Hospital, also said that the situation is “catastrophic”, as Israeli soldiers continue to raid the building.

“There is not a drop

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Health Information

November 16, 2023admin

How are Gaza casualty updates affected by Israeli attacks on hospitals? | Israel-Palestine conflict News

The Ministry of Health in Gaza has been struggling to update casualty figures as Israeli forces have increasingly targeted hospitals and allied services in the besieged enclave.

The United Nations has confirmed that the “collapse of services and communications” at hospitals in northern Gaza is seriously hampering health officials.

So, when was the last time we got an update, how has the ministry managed its figures so far, and how dire is the situation of hospitals in Gaza?

When was the last update?

On Sunday, the government media office in Gaza updated the casualty figures after a gap of two days. It raised the death toll to 11,100, including more than 8,000 children and women. The last official update came on November 10 at 2pm (12:00 GMT).

“Due to the targeting of hospitals and the prevention of entry of any of the bodies or wounded, the Ministry of Health was unable, on Saturday, to issue accurate statistics for the numbers of dead and injured during the past hours,” the media office said in a statement.

The Health Ministry in Gaza has been providing daily updates since the war started following the surprise Hamas attack inside Israel killed about 1,200 people.

Last week, Barbara Leaf, assistant US secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, told a House panel that the number of those killed in Gaza – home to 2.3 million people – is likely “higher than is being cited”.

The UN relief agency confirmed in its latest update on Saturday that a communications breakdown has prevented new figures from coming in.

Nearly 3,000 Palestinians remain missing and may be trapped or dead under the rubble while another 27,490 Palestinians have reportedly been injured, the Health Ministry said on Friday.

How does the system work?

The Health Ministry had previously explained

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Health Information

November 14, 2023admin

Data on 267,000 Sarnia patients going back 3 decades among cyberattack thefts at 5 Ontario hospitals

Patients’ information — including the reasons for their visits — going back three decades from Bluewater Health in Sarnia, Ont., and its predecessor hospitals is among the data confirmed stolen in the cyberattack on five southwestern Ontario hospitals.

Transform, the hospital’s IT provider, now confirms a database report containing information on 267,000 patients was taken. The report includes details about “every patient” seen at Bluewater Health and its predecessors since Feb. 24, 1992.

Those predecessor institutions are:

Lambton Hospitals Group.
Charlotte Eleanor Englehart Hospital of Bluewater Health.
Sarnia General Hospital.
St. Joseph’s Hospital.

“We condemn the actions of cyber criminals, in the health-care sector and elsewhere, in our communities and around the world,” Transform said in a statement Thursday that was distributed by the hospitals.

“We understand the concern this incident has raised within our communities, including patients and our employees and professional staff, and we deeply apologize.”

The database report taken from Bluewater Health includes names and addresses, as well as the reason for the visit and “general notes on prior registrations” among other personal information.

WATCH | What group claiming it’s behind cyberattack says about how it got into Ontario hospital systems:

According to a blog, cybercriminal group Daixin says it has attacked the hospitals in southwestern Ontario and forced them to go dark. CBC’s Jennifer La Grassa breaks down more details the group shared about how it got into hospital systems.

Cybercriminal group claims responsibility for ransomware attack on hospitals

Featured VideoAccording to a blog, cybercriminal group Daixin says it has attacked the hospitals in southwestern Ontario and forced them to go dark. CBC’s Jennifer La Grassa breaks down more details the group shared about how it got into hospital systems.

Social insurance numbers for about 20,000 patients at Bluewater Health and the other hospitals were

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Health Care

November 12, 2023admin

Hospitals using portable waiting rooms, tents for overflow patients

Surrey Memorial Hospital has set up a portable and Mount Saint Joseph Hospital has built an outside, enclosed space in anticipation of the surge in patients this cold and flu season

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Published Nov 10, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 4 minute read

Mount Saint Joseph Hospital in Vancouver is using a portable with space heaters as an overflow tent. Photo by NICK PROCAYLO /10102888A

Some Metro Vancouver hospitals are resorting to portables and temporary structures to accommodate overflow patients due to overcrowded emergency rooms.

Surrey Memorial Hospital has set up portables as a temporary pediatric emergency waiting area in anticipation of a surge in patients this winter. Mount Saint Joseph Hospital in Vancouver has erected a new enclosed space near the emergency room entrance as a make-shift extension to the ER.

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Health Information

October 30, 2023admin

Cyberattack at 5 southwestern Ontario hospitals leaves patients awaiting care

As five southwestern Ontario hospitals grapple with a cyberattack they say has caused delays, some patients and their families say they’ve been left waiting for hours and had procedures cancelled.

Tianna Giesbrecht says she arrived at the Windsor Regional Hospital’s Met campus by ambulance around 5 p.m. Monday for what she suspects is a problem with her appendix. She says she was still waiting by 2 p.m. Tuesday and was later seen that evening.

Speaking to a CBC reporter via Facebook Messenger, Giesbrecht says people waiting with her in the hospital have left without being seen. Staff, she says, are using paper records and seem “frustrated.”

“It’s extremely frustrating knowing that our hospitals aren’t better equipped against this sort of thing,” Giesbrecht said, noting she works in IT.

“Plus it’s scary to think of how many people are in pain and needing help and we just sit here waiting.”

A low angle of a tall, hospital building. — Windsor Regional Hospital’s Ouellette Campus is one of five area hospitals experiencing a cyberattack. (Mike Evans/CBC)

Online services such as patient records and email have been down since Monday morning at the five hospitals — Windsor Regional Hospital, Erie Shores HealthCare, Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, Bluewater Health and the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance.

The five impacted hospitals are not providing comment on Tuesday.

The hospitals released a statement Monday night saying that they would be contacting those with care scheduled in the coming days to reschedule or provide other arrangements.

“Also, we would continue to ask if you are not needing emergency care to attend your primary care provider or local clinic to reduce the impact upon the hospitals as we work towards addressing these issues and focus on those needing hospital care,” the hospitals said in a joint statement

“Unfortunately, we may not be able to reach all patients, and we request

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Health Advice

September 24, 2023admin

Health Workers Warn Loosening Mask Advice in Hospitals Would Harm Patients and Providers

Nurses, researchers, and workplace safety officers worry new guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention might reduce protection against the coronavirus and other airborne pathogens in hospitals.

A CDC advisory committee has been updating its 2007 standards for infection control in hospitals this year. Many health care professionals and scientists expressed outrage after the group released a draft of its proposals in June.

The draft controversially concluded that N95 face masks are equivalent to looser, surgical face masks in certain settings — and that doctors and nurses need to wear only surgical masks when treating patients infected by “common, endemic” viruses, like those that cause the seasonal flu.

The committee was slated to vote on the changes on Aug. 22, but it postponed action until November. Once the advice is final, the CDC begins a process of turning the committee’s assessment into guidelines that hospitals throughout the United States typically follow. After the meeting, members of the public expressed concern about where the CDC was headed, especially as covid-19 cases rise. Nationwide, hospital admissions and deaths due to covid have been increasing for several consecutive weeks.

“Health care facilities are where some of the most vulnerable people in our population have to frequent or stay,” said Gwendolyn Hill, a research intern at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, after the committee’s presentation. She said N95 masks, ventilation, and air-purifying technology can lower rates of covid transmission within hospital walls and “help ensure that people are not leaving sicker than they came.”

“We are very happy to receive feedback,” Alexander Kallen, chief of the Prevention and Response Branch in the CDC’s Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, told KFF Health News. “It is our goal to develop a guideline that is protective of patients, visitors, and health workers.” He added

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Department Health

September 10, 2023admin

Without more acute care beds, hospitals are on their own to grapple with emergency department crises

In this issue of CMAJ, Yao and colleagues present findings from British Columbia, showing that visits to emergency departments for most reasons returned to baseline levels by the summer of 2021, following a dramatic decrease in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, and have since shown a sustained increase.1 Emergency departments are seeing patients of higher acuity, more visits for mental health and substance use and more patients requiring hospital admission. Use of emergency departments increased at rates higher than population growth, and May to August were the busiest months.1

These results confirm that Canada’s emergency departments are in a crisis that will continue to build, as recently discussed in CMAJ.2 Hospitals do not operate safely when occupancy rates exceed 90% for many days in a row,3 and many Canadian hospitals have been exceeding 100% occupancy for months on end.4 Quality of care decreases, staff retention becomes problematic and overcrowding of emergency departments, a symptom of the problem, is assured.3 Given federal and provincial leaders’ inertia over increasing acute care capacity, hospital leadership, staff and physicians are left without system-level supports and will remain in a perpetual state of crisis management to mitigate harms to patients and staff.

Given higher rates of patients requiring admission,1 lack of acute care hospital beds5 and hospitals regularly operating beyond capacity,4 boarding of admitted patients in emergency departments will continue. Although the federal government recently issued one-time health care transfers, intended to relieve immediate pressures on the health care system and alleviate pressures on emergency departments,6 the money came with no requirement that provinces increase the number of staffed hospital beds, the root cause of overcrowding in emergency departments.7^,8

Although it may seem that hospital-based efforts would be

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Health Care

September 1, 2023admin

Alberta hospitals, clinics and care homes continue to support N.W.T. wildfire evacuees

With thousands of Northwest Territories wildfire evacuees remaining in Alberta the province continues to provide health care to several hundred displaced residents.

Nearly 70 per cent of people living in the Northwest Territories are out of their homes and, in addition to offering shelter and other supports, Alberta has been providing medical assistance in a number of ways including taking hospital patients and long-term care residents, as well as providing cancer, obstetrical and dialysis care.

“This is a big effort to coordinate care,” said Jennifer Jackson, a registered nurse and assistant professor in the faculty of nursing at the University of Calgary.

According to Jackson, memoranda of understanding between Alberta and the Northwest Territories make a logistically challenging process easier.

“Our two jurisdictions are well prepared to do this kind of work because we’ve got longstanding agreements in place,” she said, noting patients are often treated in Alberta when they need specialized care.

“Northwest Territories just doesn’t have the population base to offer specialized brain surgery or specialized procedures that are really in depth. So those patients have been coming to usually Edmonton but also Calgary, Fort McMurray routinely. So while this situation has more urgency we’ve already got a path that has been used before.

In addition, she added, both provinces use electronic medical records.

“So we’re not scrambling to find paper charts, which does make a huge difference,” said Jackson.

“A lot of medical conditions, whether it be cancer care or dialysis have a very time sensitive treatment plan and therefore it’s very important that people have as few disruptions as possible. What’s made that happen is the expertise of the nurses, physicians, paramedics and all the other health care colleagues who have gone above and beyond to help make these transfers possible.”

Jennifer Jackson, an assistant professor

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Health Care

August 13, 2023admin

B.C. health-care: Why some B.C. nurses are leaving hospitals

Karen Tan’s life looks a lot different today than a few years ago. Having worked at BC Children’s Hospital for 12 years, the registered nurse now manages and treats clients at SOMA MD, a medical spa in Surrey.

“I just felt over the years, just an increased amount of burnout, just feeling really tired physically, emotionally. Shift work was really hard,” she told CTV News.

It was a natural transition for Tan as she’s still able to apply her skills and experience as an RN.

“I do injections with Botox and fillers now. We do hair restoration therapy, so I draw clients’ blood. I inject their blood,” she explained.

“And I also do IV vitamin drips. A lot of the same clinical kind of skills that I did in the hospital, just for very different reasons,” she continued.

For Tan, it became clear that she wanted more routine and a job that offered a better work-life balance, so she decided to leave her job at the hospital just before the pandemic.

“Just having that regular sleep-wake schedule was so important for me. And having a young family, taking care of my daughter,” she said, adding that it was a challenge before with shift work.

She said her current role isn’t necessarily easier, but one that she’s more passionate about, noting that she took a pay cut to work in the aesthetic industry.

Tan is also one of a growing number of nurses in the province who are leaving the profession, in favour of spas, cosmetic clinics and other private medical practices.

The vacancy rate for B.C nurses is currently 28,335 — a significant jump from five years ago when the rate was 8,870.

“We need to make working conditions

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Health Care

August 6, 2023admin

Cyberattack disrupts hospitals and health care in the U.S.

MANCHESTER, Conn. –

Hospitals and clinics in several states on Friday began the time-consuming process of recovering from a cyberattack that disrupted their computer systems, forcing some emergency rooms to shut down and ambulances to be diverted.

Many primary care services at facilities run by Prospect Medical Holdings remained closed on Friday as security experts worked to determine the extent of the problem and resolve it.

John Riggi, the American Hospital Association’s national advisory for cybersecurity and risk, said the recovery process can often take weeks, with hospitals in the meantime reverting to paper systems and humans to do things such as monitor equipment and run records between departments.

“These are threat-to-life crimes, which risk not only the safety of the patients within the hospital, but also risk the safety of the entire community that depends on the availability of that emergency department to be there,” Riggi said.

The latest “data security incident” began Thursday at facilities operated by Prospect, which is based in California and has hospitals and clinics there and in Texas, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania.

“Upon learning of this, we took our systems offline to protect them and launched an investigation with the help of third-party cybersecurity specialists,” the company said in a statement Friday. “While our investigation continues, we are focused on addressing the pressing needs of our patients as we work diligently to return to normal operations as quickly as possible.”

The White House has been monitoring the cyberattack, said Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the National Security Council.

Watson also said in a statement that “the Department of Health and Human Services has been in contact with the company to offer federal assistance, and we are ready to provide support as needed to prevent any

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Tag: Hospitals

When was the last update?

How does the system work?

Cybercriminal group claims responsibility for ransomware attack on hospitals

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