Posts tagged as:

malpractice

Never events in hospitals depend on patient risk

February 25, 2010

Originally published in MedPage Today
by John Gever, MedPage Today Senior Editor
Occurrence of some so-called “never events” in hospitals may depend partly on unmodifiable risk factors such as patient characteristics, undermining the rationale for denying Medicare payment for their treatment, researchers said.
Analysis of some 890,000 surgeries performed in 1,368 hospitals showed that patient age and [...]

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Why is President Obama ignoring the doctors when it comes to health reform?

February 15, 2010

by Ernesto Gutierrez, MD
There is a lot of discussion about what Obama did right and wrong in managing the politics of passing health insurance reform. What strikes me as the most obvious is the failure to engage physicians. Sure there was support from the AMA, ACP, and AAFP, but the support was lukewarm [...]

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Doctors are responsible for a minority of medical mistakes in radiation therapy

February 11, 2010

by Amy Tuteur, MD
The New York Times recently featured a disturbing expose of serious medical errors associated with the newest forms of high tech radiation treatment, entitled, Radiation Offers New Cures, and Ways to Do Harm. The piece is an example of excellent medical journalism, compelling stories of two individuals who sustained truly horrifying injuries [...]

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When doctors are at greatest risk of making a mistake

February 5, 2010

by Martin Young, MBChB, FCS(SA)
Early in my training as a glider pilot my instructor showed me an excellent but simple analogy for ensuring my safe performance as a pilot. I have always remembered this lesson, which he called the ‘accident slope’, and have tried to apply it to my method of practicing medicine, as [...]

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Why health IT won’t help with medical risk management

January 28, 2010

by Satish Misra and Iltifat Husain
The march is on across the American healthcare landscape to implement electronic health records that also function as decision-support systems.
These “advanced” electronic health records will both provide centralized records and assist providers in making care decisions such as implementing therapy and utilizing evidence-based practice on the individual patient level. [...]

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The difference between regret and apologies in health care

January 28, 2010

I’ve written recently that “I’m sorry” are the hardest words for doctors to say.
Good piece in The New York Times, observing that the health care industry, in general, has a hard time apologizing. In many cases, hospitals and drug companies simply state they “regret” the situation.

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Were hospitals responsible for patient deaths during Hurricane Katrina?

January 21, 2010

A jury is about to decide how far hospitals have to go to protect themselves against natural disasters.
It all starts in New Orleans, during the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Hospital generators were not protected against floods, and predictably, that contributed to the loss of power during the category 5 hurricane. If all hospitals were [...]

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How doctors suffer during medical malpractice litigation

January 20, 2010

There are no winners in medical malpractice cases.
Patients, of course, suffer the most. But doctors aren’t spared either. It’s been written previously that doctors suffer significant emotional turmoil after being sued, and in fact, a good percentage even contemplate suicide.

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How root cause analysis can improve patient safety

January 19, 2010

by Bob Wachter, MD
Hospitals face so many urgent tasks in safety – computerize, promote teamwork, implement evidence-based safety practices, discover unsafe conditions – that it’s hard to know where to start. If you’re struggling, I recommend that you put your Root Cause Analysis enterprise on steroids. This is what we did at UCSF Medical Center, [...]

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Why are so many patients referred to specialists?

January 19, 2010

Do generalist doctors refer to specialists too much?
Jeffrey Parks, otherwise known as the Buckeye Surgeon, has written numerous times on the issue, and his feeling is, yes, they do.
And he’s right. There are many physicians, along with mid-level providers like nurse practitioners and physician assistants, that refer to a spectrum specialists for routine conditions, [...]

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Good doctors sometimes may make patients unhappy

January 18, 2010

by Edwin Leap, MD
Most of us went into medicine because, in addition to being good students, we wanted to help people. How many oceans of ink and forests of paper have been used explaining that point to admissions committees we’ll never know. Suffice it to say, it felt very good when our professors wrote us [...]

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Don’t use kitchen spoons to measure drug dosages

January 15, 2010

Originally published in MedPage Today
by Todd Neale, MedPage Today Staff Writer
Individuals using standard spoons from their home kitchen to dispense liquid medications may be pouring too little or too much of the drugs, researchers found.
Among volunteers trying to pour a teaspoonful of cold and cough medicine, using a slightly larger spoon resulted in underdosing [...]

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