Doctors working in hospital emergency departments face chaos, violence and high stress every day, and usually they get the diagnosis and treatment right. But, and it’s a big but, as often as one in seventeen ER visits ends with a misdiagnosis, which can have deadly consequences. Those medical misdiagnosis are newly estimated by Johns Hopkins….
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U.S. toughens law to ensure patients’ full access to their medical records
Patients have hit a red-letter day in the long, too-difficult struggle to win control of a crucial part of their care — their electronic medical care records. Hospitals and other caregiving institutions no longer can block access to these documents, with federal law now holding them accountable for any runarounds they may try. As Stat,….
Continue ReadingHospital shielded heart surgeon with 21 malpractice claims, probe finds
He cut a dashing figure in ads and billboards for a New England community hospital, which had an administration desperate for a lucrative heart care program in a region with famous academic medical centers. Dr. Yvon Baribeau, a Canadian-trained heart surgeon, seemed a perfect fit for the Catholic Medical Center, a place where he told….
Continue ReadingDon’t get in an injury pickle by overdoing trendy games
The newly familiar thwack, pop, and crack of the pastime of pickleball, alas, is increasingly accompanied by some other sounds — the moans and groans of picklers who find themselves with injuries that can be more than annoying for older aficionados of this trendy sport. Noe Sariban, a pickleball instructor, former pro player, and a….
Continue ReadingAs U.S. gears up for fall pandemic battles, a disease-fighting leader retires
This fall our nation will go once more into the breach, with federal officials hoping that another big push for vaccinations against the coronavirus and flu will stave off the deadly surges of contagions that have caused the fundamental health measure of life expectancy to plummet in a historic way. Still, the announced retirement of….
Continue ReadingWith 350 lawsuits filed, hospital now can’t ignore outcry over orthopedist
The nurses complained, and so did a handful of doctors. The patients howled. Yet, for years, administrators at a Florida hospital ignored the repeated alarms, critics say. Now, 350 lawsuits have been filed and 100 more are expected, all asserting that Dr. Richard David Heekin, a seasoned orthopedist, suffered from a progressively debilitating, rare, neurologic….
Continue ReadingSenate panel assails transplant system for causing deaths and disease
UNOS, the independent medical network responsible for procuring and distributing human organs for transplants in this country, needs big changes because it is failing desperate patients, making screening errors, among other missteps, that have killed dozens of them and caused hundreds to develop procedure-related diseases. The U.S. Senate Finance Committee reviewed hundreds of thousands of….
Continue ReadingHospitals must boost safety efforts and cut low-value (but high-profit) care, experts say
Doctors and hospitals must redouble their efforts to protect patients in their care, as the coronavirus pandemic reversed years of safety advances, and these must be restored top to bottom — and more. This powerful, timely argument has been made in a top medical journal by leading federal regulators at the Centers for Medicare and….
Continue ReadingHospitals seek to hike prices by up to 15% as safety, quality concerns grow
Hospitals have raised major alarms with insurers, businesses, and patients by asserting that spiking costs for medical staff, especially nurses, will lead them to increase their prices in the days ahead by as much as 15%. This would be a budget-busting move, breaking contracts the caregiving institutions have struck with employers and insurers, leading not….
Continue ReadingPatients are imperiled by avoidable drug errors and hit with pricing ploy
Big Pharma has made the nation so pill-obsessed that prescription drugs pose big risks to the safety of the seriously sick and injured and the finances of retirees. Recent news stories have warned, for example, that: hospitals have failed to take needed steps to secure medications from lethal mix-ups drug makers and insures play a….
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