Will the medical educators finally get that it makes no sense to force residents to toil like field animals? Yet another study, this latest from Harvard experts, finds that keeping residency training hours at more humane levels does not significantly affect quality of patient care, including inpatient mortality. Let’s be clear: The grueling preparation for….
Continue ReadingMedical Error
A $229-million Baltimore malpractice case? It’s worth digging into this news
Headlines can command attention while not always fully informing, as might be the case with these eye-catching story titles, one fresh, the others a few years back: Baltimore jury awards record $229 million for brain injury during child’s birth at Johns Hopkins Bayview (July 2019) Baltimore jury awarded $21 million to a Glen Burnie couple….
Continue ReadingPleas for ‘wellness’ moderation: Foods aren’t dirty, bad, or a cause for shame
Moderation matters in all things, though its proponents often seem to get shoved aside by more extreme views. Now there is welcome new push-back against wellness hype by those who instead want science- and evidence-based approaches to health and nutrition to prevail. In separate and unrelated expressions of their points of view, novelist Jessica Knoll….
Continue ReadingHigh court leaves it to Congress to restore service members’ basic rights
The U.S. Supreme Court has left it up to Congress to decide if service members may pursue in the civil justice system claims that they have suffered harms while seeking medical services, a fundamental civil right now denied to military personnel. Justices Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg — who rarely agree on much —….
Continue ReadingWalmart sees a bigger picture with costly imaging: frequent misdiagnosis
As Walmart tries to work with its 1 million-plus U.S. employees in controlling health care costs, the retailing giant has not only struck a blow for quality medical treatment, it also has raised key questions about a costly and booming specialization in health care: medical imaging. Walmart decided to shake up this diagnostic field by….
Continue ReadingTerps draw new fire for staying mostly mum about a fatal viral outbreak
Just as the nation grapples with the worst measles outbreak in a quarter century, the University of Maryland and public health officials are drawing fire for the way they handled the strange confluence of mold infections in dorms and the spread of an contagious virus among students on the College Park campus. The university and….
Continue ReadingWhen hospitals battle superbug outbreaks, shouldn’t patients be informed?
When big hospitals are locked in bare-knuckle battles against debilitating and deadly bacterial and fungal infections sweeping their institutions, don’t patients have the right to know about these situations that might affect their lives and care? According to some hospital insiders, no. The New York Times reported that a “culture of secrecy” prevails in hospitals….
Continue Reading5 strikes and you’re not out? Only when you’re sued for bad medical care.
Doctors, hospitals, and their malpractice insurers like to demonize lawsuits brought by injured patients, but these legal actions provide a powerful way to identify problem practitioners, and the medical profession should see this truth and use it to better police its own ranks. That’s one of the recommendations from medical-legal researchers at Stanford University, who examined….
Continue ReadingElectronic records mess threatens patient safety, investigation finds
Tempting though it may be to dismiss doctors’ howls about electronic health records—maybe they’re Luddites or they’re just another group of high-paid workers beefing about their job tools—the persistent and significant nightmare of the complicated computer systems has been this: Do they harm patient care? The answer now may be: Yes, billions of taxpayer and….
Continue ReadingDoctors ordering wasteful and excessive MRI and CT scans, experts say
When patients experience bad headaches, severe chest pain, back or neck aches, or even when kids come in with gut pain that likely is appendicitis, doctors too readily push them into and through what may be hospitals’ over-sized cash-generating machines. It’s past time to end wasteful use of high-powered imaging systems, experts from the Mayo….
Continue Reading