Morning Briefing

Stat: Doctors May Learn Bad Habits At Teaching Hospitals With Safety Violations

Teaching hospitals like Jackson South, located in metro Miami, are where physician trainees get practice treating patients. They prepare the next generation of doctors, and they have a reputation as places of cutting-edge patient care, given their ties to academic institutions. But at some of these hospitals, residents may be learning bad habits. A STAT analysis of federal inspection data finds that there’s a wide gap in the quality of training at teaching hospitals, as shown by how frequently these hospitals are cited for deficiencies by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. While the majority of the roughly 1,200 teaching hospitals received no citations each year from 2014 to 2017, others racked up dozens of safety violations in that time period — putting patients at risk, and compromising the training that students receive. (Blau, 4/20)