When Trevor Roberts’ leg bones snapped during a high school football game near Wichita, Kansas, he received the standard orthopedic treatment: a resetting of the bones with a titanium rod to hold them in place. So why did he have to have an above-the-knee amputation because of gangrene six days later? The surgeon who had….
Continue ReadingHospitals
ER delays cause patients to skip care
Delays in the emergency room cause some patients to forgo treatment, according to a study by the University of South Florida. The study found that when ER patients have to wait to be admitted to hospital, the waiting time for other ER patients becomes longer, and the more likely it is that some of them….
Continue ReadingOpen and Honest: New York Hospitals Test Malpractice Pilot Program
Five hospitals in New York City have joined a 3-year, $3-million program aimed at decreasing medical malpractice costs. The federally funded program will attempt to cut malpractice-related costs at the five hospitals by (a) revealing medical errors quickly; (b) offering early settlements; and (c) using judicial mediators to assist in settlement negotiations as an alternative….
Continue ReadingUse of rapid response teams hides hospital inadequacies, patient expert says
The use of rapid response teams could be masking underlying patient care problems in hospitals, according to a patient safety expert writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Rapid Response Teams (RRTs) are teams of doctors and nurses assigned to provide rapid bedside care for patients who are in critical condition. The co-author….
Continue ReadingDetailed heart surgery ratings now available
Until now, it’s been easier to rate appliances and restaurants than surgeons in most parts of the country, but that should change now that surgeons who perform cardiac bypass surgery are being rated on objective quality measures in Consumer Reports magazine. The consumer magazine recently published ratings of 221 surgical groups in 42 states online…..
Continue ReadingPatient safety authority finds frequent dosing errors with a narcotic drug
Healthcare providers need to know more about the efficacy and potency of hydromorphone, a pain killer frequently used as a morphine substitute in post-operative patients, to avoid medication errors and adverse drug reactions (ADR), says an advisory from the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority (PPSA). Researchers hired by PPSA reviewed 1,694 medication error and 937 adverse….
Continue ReadingHospital Infections: Discouraging Words from a Patient Safety Pioneer
Infections in the large-bore tubes that keep patients in intensive care units alive are often lethal but readily preventable. A simple checklist of sanitary practices was proven to cut the rate of these “central line infections” to nearly zero. But that was in one chain of hospitals in Michigan. What about the rest of the….
Continue ReadingRepeat Cesarean Sections and Malpractice
Doctors repeatedly blame patients for the high rate of Cesarean sections in this country. As one claimed in today’s New York Times letters column, parents demand “nothing short of a perfect outcome” from childbirth and sue when they don’t get it. The reality is quite different. Here’s what I wrote in a letter published in….
Continue ReadingCan Malpractice Be Prevented by Mandating Nurse Staffing Levels?
As noted many times on this blog, nurses are the patient safety mainstays of good hospital care. So should hospitals be required to maintain a minimum nurse-to-patient ratio? California has done so, and nurse Theresa Brown wrote an op-ed recently in the New York Times discussing a proposed federal mandate (which seems to be going….
Continue ReadingTips for Getting Home Safely from the Hospital — and Staying Home
It’s such a relief to get a family member home from the hospital that many of us don’t realize how crucial the next few weeks are in making sure the patient stays home and gets healthy. Hospitals don’t always help the situation by giving out confusing and cryptic discharge instructions. For this especially vulnerable time,….
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