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Court records indicate that Cedars-Sinai recruited Hrayr K. Shahinian, MD, to establish and direct its skull-base surgery program in 1996. The doctor's experience at the hospital was rocky from the start, says his attorney Robert C. Baker, JD, a partner with the law firm of Baker, Keener & Nahra in Los Angeles.
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Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles will have to pay almost $4.7 million to a surgeon who claims the hospital retaliated against him for blowing the whistle on unsafe practices in his department, unless the hospital manages to have the award overturned. The hospital already has spent as much as $1 million to appeal the arbitration decision, according to the informed estimate of the plaintiff's attorney.
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The ECRI Institute Patient Safety Organization (PSO) recently issued a warning about a patient safety issue involving cardiac monitoring of incorrect patients. The issue was brought to ECRI Institute PSO's attention in its analysis of reports submitted by participating healthcare providers.
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Barcoded wristbands can greatly reduce the opportunity for patient identification errors, says David Grant, RPh, MBA, vice president of pharmacy and clinical process improvement at Summit Health in Chambersburg, PA.
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Patient identification errors continue to plague the healthcare industry despite years of efforts to eradicate this potentially disastrous problem. Understanding why patients and specimens are misidentified is key to reducing or eliminating errors, and risk managers can make progress by focusing on the human behavioral components of healthcare work.
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The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) briefly reopened the comment period on the proposed rule to record work-related musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). The comments came from May 17 to June 16, about a month after two teleconferences focused on concerns of small businesses.
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As the health care workforce ages, the severity of work-related injuries is increasing, requiring new strategies for protecting workers. At the top of the list: Preventing falls, which are already the second most common cause of reportable injury in hospitals.
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Safe lift programs save money, and they save more if they are comprehensive and have leadership support. That finding from a new study of workers' compensation and lift-related injuries in long-term care provides a strong, new underpinning for the financial benefits of safe patient handling.
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About one out of every three needlesticks occurs with a hypodermic syringe a device that is available with many types of safety features. As thousands of needlesticks continue to occur from hypodermic needles, hospitals need to do a better job of protecting health care workers from bloodborne pathogens, safety experts say.
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As with most employers, the cost of health insurance was rising year after year for Sentara Healthcare of Norfolk, VA, an integrated health care delivery system that includes eight acute care hospitals, outpatient centers, long-term care, and Optima Health Plan, an insurance subsidiary.
