Healthcare Risk Management – March 1, 2011
March 1, 2011
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Suicides in the hospital: The liability risk nobody wants to talk about
The phone on your desk can ring with news of a wide variety of events that will make your heart sink and yield trouble for the hospital for months to come, but few can rival being notified that a patient has committed suicide in your emergency department (ED). -
Study will focus on suicide prevention in ED
The Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester is conducting a $12 million, multisite study funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health aimed at improving suicide prevention in hospital emergency department (ED) patients. -
Not just patients: Physicians also at risk
Risk managers focusing on the risk of suicide should remember that their own physicians also can be at high risk, says Matt Steinkamp, vice president of service delivery at Physician Wellness Services, a company based in Minneapolis that helps employers deal with impaired physicians. -
Analytics help improve physician response
Most hospitals have no documented information about communication events phone calls, pages, texts, voicemails between their nurses, physicians and other clinicians that occur hundreds of times each day. -
Doc, can you read this?
At most hospitals, the vast majority of physician orders are still written by hand. That means a lot of hurried squiggles that no one can decipher, and time-wasting phone calls to clarify the order, not to mention the threat to patient safety -
EHR coming on strong, but so are security risks
You may be proud of your hospital's progress towards adopting electronic health records (EHR), but you could be overlooking the additional risks of data security breaches. -
Two data breaches a year is typical for hospitals
These are more results from the "Benchmark Study on Patient Data Security Practices," conducted by the Ponemon Institute in Traverse City, MI: -
Reinertsen honored with Eisenberg award
James L. Reinertsen, MD, received a 2010 John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality award for individual achievement from The Joint Commission and the National Quality Forum -
LRC: Plaintiffs Allege Failure to Assess Severity of Condition; $11.5 Million Verdict in Illinois
A 30-year-old pregnant woman presented to a hospital ER complaining of abdominal pain at a level of 10 out of 10. The woman was seen by an ER physician who diagnosed the woman as having a partial bowel obstruction. No further testing or procedures were immediately ordered, and the ER physician communicated to the surgeon that the situation was not serious.