Innovative technology that can track when a patient ingests a pill is being touted as a way to tackle drug nonadherence. The so-called smart pill joins other new compliance strategies such as financial incentives for patients and game-like applications.

The strategies are the latest methods offered to physicians and others in health care to battle the perennial problem of patients not taking their medicines, which adds billions of dollars to U.S. medical costs annually.

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A quality improvement effort involving nearly 150 hospitals in 16 U.S. communities is boasting reduced readmissions, improved emergency care and better adherence to care standards.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Aligning Forces for Quality began in 2006 with four pilot sites and now has health care partners in communities across the nation, such as Humboldt County, Calif., and Memphis, Tenn. Hospitals participating in the project’s Hospital Quality Network, which started in 2010, took part in monthly conference calls to share best practices with one another and learn to implement strategies shown to work in other organizations.

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Hospitals reported only 8% of the adverse events that they were required to share with state authorities, said a July study from the Dept. of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General.

Twenty-five states and the District of Columbia have adverse-event reporting systems, although the reporting requirements vary by state. Of 35 adverse events the OIG had identified previously in these states, only three were submitted to a state reporting system. The OIG found that only one Maryland hospital had internal reporting of an adverse event — excessive bleeding that prolonged a patient’s hospital stay — and did not report it when required.

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The vast majority of hospitals provide an incomplete picture of the costs, risks and benefits of robot-assisted gynecologic surgery on their websites, said a study in July’s American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Researchers examined the websites of 432 hospitals with 200 or more beds in six states and found that 44% had content relating to robotic gynecologic surgery. Nearly two-thirds used stock images from the robotic device’s manufacturer, Intuitive Surgical Inc., and 24% used text from the company.

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Newly published research reveals a mixed picture regarding the quality of care that low-income patients can expect as health system reform moves ahead after the Supreme Court’s June decision on the Affordable Care Act.

The flood of newly insured patients — about 30 million during the next decade, according to a July Congressional Budget Office estimate — probably will strain a health system that the Assn. of American Medical Colleges says will see a shortage of 160,000 physicians by 2025. The CBO estimates that 11 million of the newly insured will be covered by Medicaid, though that number could be substantially higher if more states decide to accept the federal government’s plan to expand eligibility for the program.

Beyond the work force issue, there is the broader question of where these patients — and the 30 million the CBO expects to remain uncovered by the law — will seek care and what caliber of care they will get. Some experts argue that federal pay-for-performance efforts could exacerbate the financial squeeze felt by the health care organizations that traditionally have delivered care to the poor.

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In the name of patient safety, some hospitals require that senior physicians get a fitness-for-duty evaluation as a condition of medical staff privileges.

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Nearly two-thirds of surgeons are unwilling to honor a patient’s request to end life support after operating on that patient, and they are less willing to do so when a surgical error occurs, said a study in Annals of Surgery in July.

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Research into many kinds of hospital care has found disparities in the morbidity and mortality outcomes for patients who seek treatment during the week compared with those unfortunate enough to get sick on weekends. This “weekend effect” has been demonstrated in hospital treatment of pulmonary embolism, gastrointestinal bleeding, diverticulitis and more.

Now a study of nearly 90,000 U.S. hospitalizations for atrial fibrillation has found another gap in weekend care. About 20% of the irregular heart-rhythm patients studied were hospitalized over the weekend, and 1.1% of these patients died. That is compared with 0.9% of the patients admitted during the week. After adjusting for hospital and patient characteristics and patient comorbidities, the weekend patients had a 24% higher chance of dying compared with weekday patients.

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It takes between 20 and 40 minutes for the OraQuick In-Home HIV Test to deliver results on whether a person is HIV positive, but it took seven years for the test to win Food and Drug Administration approval for over-the-counter sales to patients.

FDA officials required the product’s manufacturer, OraSure Technologies, to conduct studies to prove that patients could reliably follow written instructions to use the test, interpret the results and access follow-up care. In July, OraSure won FDA approval.

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Massachusetts has repealed a 2008 state ban on industry-provided meals for physicians and other health professionals.

The change allows medical industry companies to pay for “modest meals and refreshments” for doctors and other health professionals in connection with educational presentations that are not certified by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education. The presentations must happen “in a venue and manner conducive to informational communication,” the new law says.

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Transplants involving recipients who are not U.S. citizens or residents will get closer scrutiny under new rules adopted by the organizations that set American transplantation policy.

The move comes after high-profile controversies over wealthy foreigners who received deceased-donor transplants in the U.S. A Los Angeles Times investigation in 2008 uncovered four Japanese gangsters who got liver transplants at the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center.

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The people behind an effort to make Massachusetts the third state to enact a law allowing physician-assisted suicide have secured enough signatures to put the issue on the ballot in November.

“We’re confident … that we’ll be successful in November,” said Stephen Crawford, communications director of the Dignity 2012 campaign, which is pushing the initiative. Among the measure’s original petitioners is Marcia Angell, MD, former editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine.

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The National Quality Forum’s board of directors in late June reaffirmed its decision to endorse a measure of all-cause readmissions. Many hospital leaders say the metric is unfair and could have adverse, unintended consequences if it is used to determine payment.

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