-
Nearly every health care facility has a patient safety brochure these days, and they almost always come out of some department other than risk management. So do you really know what is in your organization's patient safety brochure?
-
Addicted physicians must overcome significant fears about the impact on their careers and personal lives before they are willing to ask for help, so risk managers can help by assuring them the process will be about rehabilitation and not punishment, according to two experts in the field.
-
-
News: An obese, middle-aged woman suffering from pancreatitis and gallstones underwent gallbladder removal surgery at a hospital. Over the next two weeks, she continued to experience abdominal pain, nausea, and vomiting. Although doctors suspected that the woman might have gallstones floating freely in her bile duct, they were unable to perform the necessary procedures to confirm that suspicion due to the patient's size. The woman subsequently died.
-
News: A man exhibiting tuberculosis-like symptoms went to a clinic for treatment. Tests were ordered, including an analysis by the state health department, after which it was determined that the man was suffering from a disease related to tuberculosis called Mycobacterium avium. Several months later, the man presented to the emergency department with ear pain and an upper respiratory infection.ï
-
Any contract with another organization requires careful attention to details, regulations, and legal issues, but hospice agencies need to pay special attention when contracting with a long-term care facility to provide services, says Meg S.L. Pekarske, JD, an attorney with Reinhart Boerner in Madison, WI.
-
(Editor's note: This month we begin a two-month look at partnerships between hospice agencies and long-term care providers. This issue contains stories related to key issues to address in developing and maintaining relationships between hospice agencies and long-term care facilities, including potential legal risks as well as tips to strengthen relationships. Next month, we look at a hospice agency that has developed an inpatient hospice unit within a long-term care facility.)
-
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has granted a request from the American Hospital Association (AHA) to allow critical access hospitals to submit and publicly report outpatient quality data along with other hospitals.
-
Emergency department patients waited an average of 30 minutes to see a physician in 2004, eight minutes longer than in 1997, according to a study of U.S. ED visits published on-line recently by Health Affairs.
-