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A woman having an asthma attack presented at the emergency department. After she was hospitalized for three days, her daughter came to visit and found her non-responsive and blue. The patient was resuscitated; however, she was left brain damaged. The patients daughter brought suit against the hospital and attending physician. The jury returned a $5 million verdict in favor of the plaintiff.
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Question: Ive heard that the final Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act states that the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will not sanction hospitals for inappropriate transfers during a national emergency if the hospital is the area affected by the emergency. Does a large-scale disaster in our community, such as an airliner crash, qualify?
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The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) in Huntington Valley, PA, has issued a special alert about lookalike packaging of two drugs that can lead to serious adverse events.
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Citing serious concerns about needle safety at Connecticuts largest hospital, a union representing hospital service workers has filed a formal complaint with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in Washington, DC.
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The risk of giving advice to patients by phone should be well known to risk managers, and most have educated staff about what not to say to patients with questions. Add in the automated answering systems that urge patients to call 911 for emergencies, and you should be well covered in this area, right? Not necessarily.
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A closely watched case in Connecticut has some observers worried that health care providers will be discouraged from reporting information about physicians to state boards, other monitoring groups, and even a hospitals internal peer review system.
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Liability waivers are best used for voluntary activities or when patients refuse your clinicians advice, says Jeffrey Driver, JD, MBA, chief risk officer with Stanford (CA) University Medical Center and president of the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management in Chicago. He suggests these categories.
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Youre fed up with being dragged into every lawsuit that has even the slightest connection to your institution, so you daydream about having patients just sign a waiver up front promising to never sue you for anything. Nice fantasy, but those things dont really hold up in court, do they?
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