Make sure that the radiation therapy center treating you has significant experience, in years not months, with the specific machine being used on you. Too often, hospital administrators buy a fancy new machine, advertise it heavily in glossy brochures, but don’t take the time to make sure the machine is properly calibrated and that the medical physicists who operate the machine are fully trained.
You should also ask if the machine treating you has been inspected recently by an independent agency. One federally funded inspection and testing service is the Radiological Physics Center, operated out of MD Anderson Hospital in Houston. It does inspections for any radiation center that wants to receive federal funding for clinical trials. The Center found in 2008 that nearly three in ten hospitals it inspected failed to accurately irradiate a test dummy using IMRT technology.
There is also a big problem with fake credentials among medical physicists, who are in charge of making sure patients get the right dose of radiation. The American Board of Radiology certifies medical physicists in one of three sub-specialties. You can check if a physicist is certified at the umbrella website for all medical board certifications, the American Board of Medical Specialties.
More about radiation therapy safety issues can be found in our patient safety blog.
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If you believe you or a family member has been seriously injured from medical malpractice, medical error, or neglect by a doctor, hospital, nurse, clinic, nursing home or other health care provider, you may want to click here to contact an experienced medical malpractice attorney for a free evaluation of your case. You can also email us at info@patrickmalonelaw.com or call us at 202-742-1500 or 888-625-6635 toll-free. We will respond within 24 hours. There is no charge for our initial consultation.
