Healthcare Risk Management – January 1, 2020
January 1, 2020
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Hospital Realizes Value of Disaster Planning When Bus Crashes
A small hospital in a town of 1,500 residents was the main facility receiving patients after a serious bus crash. The hospital coordinated with other facilities in the health system to manage the incident.
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Nurses Require Their Own Education on Malpractice Prevention
Nurses often are undereducated on malpractice prevention and risk management because efforts focus more on physicians. Education focused on nursing concerns can help reduce the risk for themselves and their employers.
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Google/Ascension Partnership Shows HIPAA Gray Areas
The Office for Civil Rights is investigating a huge data-sharing project between Google and Ascension, one of the country’s largest nonprofit health systems, in a case that analysts say highlights the uncertainties of exactly what is and is not allowed under HIPAA.
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Program Trains Administrative Staff to Prevent Falls
A health plan in California is providing fall prevention training to medical office staff. Nonclinical staff often are overlooked in fall prevention efforts.
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Cameras Help Monitor Compliance, Reduce Patient Falls
A health system based in Florida has found using cameras can improve compliance with quality and safety efforts, especially when the camera includes a speaker for communicating with people.
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Failure to Treat High Blood Pressure Results in Kidney Failure, $31 Million Verdict
A critical lesson from this case focuses on the legal concept of comparative negligence, which concerns whether a patient’s own negligent conduct played a role in causing or worsening his or her injury.
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Appellate Court Orders Retrial Due to Physician’s Improper Testimony
This case raises an interesting legal issue that may be important and applicable to medical care providers’ defense of medical malpractice actions. Since litigation often arises years after the underlying services are provided, the care providers may no longer remember specific details for one patient who received services years ago. Under specific circumstances, courts permit individuals to testify about their courses of conduct when such courses rise to the level of “habit.”