Quick triage of patients who arrive at the Emergency Department isn’t just important for patient safety. It makes hospitals a lot more popular with their consumers, as one hospital has found. The emergency department at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Plano launched a policy called the 30-Minute Promise in October 2009, pledging to treat patients….
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Malpractice and preventable harm still common in hospitals, new study finds
A study of ten hospitals in North Carolina finds a one-in-four chance of being hurt by medical care, a rate that hasn’t improved in the ten years since a landmark study said that 100,000 Americans were killed by malpractice and medical error each year. The new study, published in the nation’s leading medical journal, the….
Continue ReadingWrong operation teaches surgeon the value of pre-procedure protocols
An orthopedic surgeon who performed the wrong operation on a patient now says he no longer sees any burden in The Joint Commission’s (TJC) Universal Protocol for Preventing Wrong Site, Wrong Procedure and Wrong Person Surgery. And he’s gone on the record in a prominent medical journal to confess error and try to help other….
Continue ReadingChecklists for surgery safety cut death and injuries, new Dutch study shows
Any lingering doubts about the positive effects of comprehensive surgical checklist intervention should vanish following the release of a study conducted in the Netherlands and published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The Dutch study evaluated the effects of a comprehensive surgical checklist intervention in six regional and tertiary care centers in the Netherlands….
Continue ReadingFDA recalls infusion pump and tissue stabilizer
The Food and Drug Administration has issued Class I recalls of Hospira Symbiq One- and Two-Channel infusers and Medtronic Octopus Nuvo tissue stabilizers. Class 1 recalls are the most serious type of recall and involve situations in which there is a reasonable probability that use of these products will cause serious adverse health consequences or….
Continue ReadingHospital Malpractice: Saying They’re Sorry and Showing They Mean It
Victims of hospital malpractice hunger to be treated with respect as human beings by the hospitals who have destroyed or damaged their lives. A simple “we’re sorry” is a good first step, but only a first step. Some forward-looking hospitals are learning that implementing patient safety changes as part of the healing process makes good….
Continue ReadingAlarm sounded over drug-resistant bladder bacteria
Infectious disease specialists are raising the alarm over a variant of the e.coli bacteria that is resistant to most of the antibiotics used to treat bladder infections and could be responsible for more than 3,000 deaths a year. E.coli ST131, an aggressive strain of multi-drug-resistant e.coli bacteria, may be responsible for as many as 1….
Continue ReadingFewer malpractice claims are being brought against hospitals
The frequency of malpractice claims against hospitals has declined slightly and the severity of those claims is leveling off, according to a report from Zurich, the insurance company. The fifth annual Zurich benchmarking report on claims trends in the healthcare industry, which collected data from 1,600 U.S. hospitals between 1997 and 2007, indicates that claims….
Continue ReadingSharing safety data among hospitals is shown to cut injury rate
Here’s a new research finding that is encouraging but discouraging at the same time for patient safety. After 16 Michigan hospitals began to share patient safety information, surgical complication rates dropped by nearly 10 percent, according to a recent study. That’s encouraging, of course. The disquieting piece is why it would take a major research….
Continue ReadingMalpractice in treating sepsis: Early aggressive care saves lives
There are no simple diagnostic tests for sepsis – an out-of-control reaction to infection that can start shutting down organs in mere hours – but there are warning signs if healthcare providers pay close enough attention, according to Dr. James O’Brien, a critical care specialist at Ohio State University Medical Center. “Minutes matter,” O’Brien says,….
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