Wrong-site surgeries and wrong-patient procedures performed by health care providers are so awful and so easily avoidable that they are known as “never events,” because there is never a good reason for them to happen. The Joint Commission, the organization that accredits hospitals, has been working to implement rules to prevent wrong-patient and wrong-site procedures. […]
Medication errors cause unnecessary injuries to patients in Pennsylvania and across the country year after year. Injuries from medication errors include administration of the wrong drugs or the wrong doses when a patient is in a hospital. But a type of medication error that is all too common is for prescriptions filled by a pharmacist […]
To the lay person, it may seem as though hospitals, as opposed to doctors’ offices, are the most likely places for instances of medical malpractice to take place. Hospitals see more patients suffering from desperate medical conditions, and are the location of the most complex and dangerous medical procedures. Treatments afforded at doctors’ offices are […]
An study of seven industrialized countries just published in the International Journal of Clinical Practice sheds some light on the key risk factors for errors behind medical care, treatment and medication errors. One of the top issues was poor care coordination. Sadly, another key contributor was a patient’s low socioeconomic status. Researchers from the U.S. […]
With the recent trend toward e-medicine, there has been an assumption that electronic medical records, and especially electronic-format prescriptions, would cut down on medical errors. The stereotype that doctors have terrible handwriting isn’t baseless, and many have speculated that numerous prescription errors might be caused by nurses’ and pharmacists’ inability to read some doctors’ illegible […]
As part of its quarterly Pennsylvania Patient Safety Advisory released in June, the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority revealed that it received 652 reports of radiology errors from health care facilities in 2009, the latest period studied. A review of those events found that specific failed protocols such as inaccurate scheduling, patient misidentification and failure to […]
Under a mandate by the Affordable Care Act, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued a new rule: Medicaid will no longer reimburse doctors, hospitals and other health care providers for treatment in clear cases of medical malpractice. The rule lists 26 types of preventable, hospital-acquired conditions that will now disqualify health […]
Hospitals where serious medical errors were committed have been fined $300,000 by state regulatory authorities. Five hospitals were found to have made errors that directly led to patients’ deaths or serious injuries. One of the deaths cited was caused when a patient was left unattended. The patient subsequently fell and died from a fractured skull. […]
A recently filed medical malpractice lawsuit alleges that a surgeon who was performing an exploratory laparotomy left a hole in his patient’s bowel. The suit claims that the patient died as a result of the doctor’s negligence. A woman underwent surgery in March of 2009 in order to treat a small bowel obstruction. Five days after the surgery, she was discharged from […]
