Patient Safety Blog

DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog

• Big Insurance ripped for fueling opioid drug epidemic September 25, 2017
  The epidemic of opioid drug abuse, which increasingly is claiming children’s lives, has plenty of blameworthy causes. Here’s a new one: health insurers which steer patients to cheaper, more addictive painkillers while playing Scrooge for less addictive but pricier alternatives. Pro Publica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalism site, and the New York Times get credit for […]
• Sunday pro football games aren’t the place to serve up genetic screening malarkey September 24, 2017
  Let’s give a hurrah for Maryland health officials — they threw a red flag at a high-tech startup that planned with the Baltimore Ravens football team to serve up a mass genetic screening test at a recent game. The blunt reality is this would have been genetic malarkey. This incident should serve as a reminder, caveat emptor, […]
• New questions on safety, for old and young, about medications for the mind September 22, 2017
  Psychiatric medications, which doctors have prescribed freely and patients have taken dutifully, not only may have demonstrated risks for the young but also under-considered problems for adults older than 40 — 1 in 7 of whom has filled a script, for example, for an antidepressant. The New York Times has done a service by bringing […]
• Regulators probing sanitary & staffing woes at leading D.C. hospital September 21, 2017
  MedStar Washington Hospital Center, described by its chief medical officer as “the most important hospital in the most important city in the most important country in the world,” is under investigation by regulators in the District of Columbia due to maintenance failures that allowed sewage to seep down walls and onto operating room floors. USA […]
• In hurricanes’ wake, new concerns about elderly and tainted waters September 20, 2017
  Although Hurricanes Harvey and Irma have stormed off into the record books, their harms, particularly to health, persist for Texans, Floridians, and residents of the Caribbean. Recovery and return to normalcy will take the ravaged areas longer than many Americans realize, experts say. And they already are uncovering systemic woes, some fatal, with which planners […]