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The management of patients with intravenous insulin is fraught with challenges when a standardized dosing protocol is utilized. These challenges include increased nursing workflow, the potential for dosing errors due to the complexity of the protocols, and the occurrence of hypoglycemia due to the lack of patient specificity with the protocol. The use of insulin dosing software such as EndoTool...

2022 CMS Changes for eCQM The 2022 final rule from CMS brings the adoption of two electronic clinical quality measures (eCQMs) for the management of inpatient diabetes in the hospital setting. This rule will standardize when and how hospitals report inpatient hyperglycemia and inpatient hypoglycemia and will directly impact how hospitals publicly rank according to these quality standards. Specifically, hospitals...

The first week of February marks National Burn Awareness Week. Likely all have experienced a burn at some point as it’s the leading cause of accidental injury, but far fewer have ever experienced a severe burn requiring acute care. In the United States, the CDC estimates 50,000 burn injuries require a hospital stay each year and 20,000 have burns involving...

“It’s only when you drop yesterday’s assumptions that you can glimpse tomorrow’s patterns and possibility. To see deeper, unsee first.” – Umair Haq Clinical inertia is a term that has been used to define the resistance to a new therapeutic treatment. Across healthcare, we see clinical inertia often, but perhaps the best example is the treatment of hyperglycemia. The way we...

In healthcare today, patients with diabetes are not only more likely to be hospitalized than patients without diabetes, they are also more likely to have longer durations of hospital stay. According to the American Diabetes Association, twenty-two percent of all hospital inpatient days were acquired by patients with diabetes. Hospital inpatient care accounted for half of the U.S. medical expenses...

We are familiar with the link between hyperglycemia and increased mortality, even in patients who do not have diabetes. Our past blog posts have emphasized the importance of glucose control as a significant component of a patient’s health, particularly in intensive care environments. To create awareness for prevention, it is imperative to put emphasis on the facts. With regard to...

Hyperglycemia, or high blood sugar, can negatively affect hospitalized patients who fail to produce sufficient insulin to metabolize the sugar contents of their blood. Aside from patients with diabetes, hyperglycemia can result from medical conditions. Stroke or myocardial infarction (heart attack) patients, patients who have problems with the thyroid, adrenal, pituitary gland, pancreas, and patients who undergo major surgeries may...

Hyperglycemia. Hypoglycemia. What’s the difference? What’s the significance? Hyper, derived from Greek, means above, or in excess, while glyc denotes sweet, and mia means in the blood. Together, they mean too much glucose in the blood. Hypo, also Greek, means less than normal or deficient, in this case too little glucose in the blood. Both conditions are commonly associated with diabetes...

How would you like to save your hospital almost $75,000 a year in potentially unreimbursed expenses? This was the realization Wilson Memorial Hospital, a 71-bed hospital in western Ohio, made when it decided it needed to find a better way to control blood glucose levels across the hospital. In 2007, Remote Automated Laboratory System, a glycemic benchmarking service, reported that...