Time and again in U.S. health care, new technologies are hurried into wide use with little testing, scant training of their human operators, and lack of solid evidence that newer really is better. After the flush of optimism has faded, billions of dollars later, we learn how to judiciously use the new equipment, but only….
Continue ReadingArchives for January 2010
How Good Is U.S. Health Care? It Depends on the Yardstick
Measured by results — preventable deaths and injuries due to malpractice, medical errors, preventable infections, misdiagnosis and other events that shouldn’t happen — American health care has a lot of problems. Millions of patients are injured every year, and upwards of 200,000 patients die annually from preventable errors and hospital-acquired infections. The United States also….
Continue ReadingPreventing Malpractice in Radiation Therapy
What can cancer patients do to protect themselves from malpractice in radiation therapy? This urgent question arises from a lengthy series of investigative reports in the New York Times. The articles exposed serious patient injuries that stem from therapists who are overwhelmed and inexperienced, lax regulation and indifference by hospital administrators. A key part of….
Continue ReadingMalpractice in Radiation Therapy: Hideous Injuries from Lack of Simple Checklists
More evidence of the urgent need for “checklists” to protect patient safety in complex medical treatments comes with a long article in the New York Times about terrible injuries from malpractice episodes during radiation therapy. Yet readers have to dive deep into the article to find this key point. Scott Jerome-Parks suffered terrible radiation burns….
Continue ReadingMaryland medical malpractice victims are hit by state court
An effort to overturn Maryland’s unfair malpractice damages “cap” has been scotched by Maryland’s highest court. The case involved Richard Semsker, a deceased Rockville attorney whose family was represented in a wrongful death lawsuit by Patrick Malone & Associates. The Maryland Court of Appeals has ruled that the jury’s verdict must be reduced to account….
Continue ReadingMental Health Care in America: Many Issues in Getting the Right Treatment to the Right People
A new study that concluded that two commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs don’t work for people with mild depression has opened an interesting discussion about the quality of mental health care in America. The quality score: C-minus, for lots of reasons. Judith Warner wrote in the New York Times that the news media reports about the….
Continue ReadingAnother Good Clue that Your Hospital Takes Infection Prevention Seriously — Chlorhexidine
Memorize the name of this antiseptic wash and make sure your hospital uses it: chlorhexidine. Research continues to pile up that diligent but inexpensive efforts by hospital staff can greatly cut the annual toll of an estimated 100,000 lives lost to hospital infections. The latest simple step involves greater use of the antiseptic chlorhexidine to….
Continue ReadingFighting Hospital Infections: When Less is More
The deadly MRSA infection, estimated to kill 19,000 Americans every year (more than the toll from AIDS), has been virtually wiped out in Norway, with three simple steps: As described in a recent Associated Press article: Norway’s model is surprisingly straightforward. — Norwegian doctors prescribe fewer antibiotics than any other country, so people do not….
Continue ReadingBreast Cancer Screening: The Quiet Truth
The political brouhaha that followed the new guidelines on mammograms has now died down, maybe enough so that patients can start to absorb the quiet truth about breast cancer and the role of mammogram screening. The National Breast Cancer Coalition has worked since 1991 to get Congress to fund research and appropriate treatment for this….
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