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A post-kidney transplant patient was admitted to a hospital with urosepsis and was placed in the intensive care unit. He was intubated; but when his airway became obstructed, efforts to correct the situation were unsuccessful, and he died. The case settled for $800,000.
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A young man went to an emergency department in the afternoon complaining of discomfort in his throat. Surgery was performed to address an abscess. That evening, after his family had gone home, he suffered from cardiac arrhythmia, went into a coma, and died three days later. His wife and two sons brought suit for wrongful death.
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Medical malpractice insurance premiums are 17.1% lower in states that have capped court awards, although the lack of such tort reform measures in other states does not fully explain recent jumps in what physicians pay to cover the cost of malpractice suits, says Kenneth E. Thorpe, PhD, chairman of the health policy and management department at the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta.
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A behavioral health care center in Mississippi is proving that a concentrated effort to reduce restraint can yield great improvements not only for the patients but also for the bottom line of the health care facility.
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While an elderly man on the anticoagulant drug warfarin was waiting to get blood drawn at his physicians office, he was handed some educational materials about the drug.
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Although Zeena Engelke, RN, MS, has multiple job duties as patient education manager of the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics in Madison, she has managed to incorporate direct teaching into her position as well.
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While states are coming under fire for not spending as much tobacco settlement money on smoking cessation programs for youth as they should, the American Legacy Foundations 2002 National Youth Tobacco Survey indicates that the prevalence of current smoking among high-school students declined in 2002.
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A Medicaid reform proposal released by the National Conference of State
Legislatures (NCSL) is driven by two factors the increasing need for the Medicaid program and the programs increasingly unaffordable cost to states.
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New data indicate that the continuous deterioration that plagued state finances for the past several years appears to be easing. The reports come from the National Governors Association (NGA), National Association of State Budget Officers, and the National Conference of State Legislatures.
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Because disease management programs do not provide instantaneous savings, the decision to invest in them represents a belief that savings will occur down the line as a result of the programs effectiveness.
