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Three scenarios that no hospital security or privacy officer wants to experience:
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A hospital privacy and security compliance officer knows exactly what policies and programs within the organization are designed to protect patient information (PHI), but what should be expected of a business associate (BA)?
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The California Department of Health has fined Kaiser Permanente South San Francisco Medical Center $50,000 for failing to follow "policies and procedures for the safe and effective administration of medication," in relation to improper refrigeration. Thousands of patients received the potentially dangerous medications over almost three years.
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News: A 14-year-old boy was taken to a local hospital emergency department (ED) with complaints of sharp pain on the right side of his face and his right shoulder after being kicked in the head by his mother. The boy reported that his pain level was 10 on a scale of 1-10; however, the triage nurse indicated his was a "non-urgent" case.
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Deciding who pays for a new physician's tail coverage usually hinges on who has the leverage in the hiring situation, says Mary Anne Hilliard, JD, BSN, CPHRM, chief risk counsel with Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC, and president of the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management (ASHRM) in Chicago.
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Because clinical evaluation often depends on diagnostic tests, diagnostic physicians have a responsibility to notify referring clinicians when test results reveal urgent or unexpected findings. According to a report in the Journal of the American College of Radiology (JACR), the rapid growth of diagnostic testing appears to be placing physicians at greater risk for medical malpractice claims for test communication failures.
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Hospitals are bringing more self-employed physicians on board as employees, which can bring benefits to both parties, but it brings a potential problem for risk managers. What do you do about tail insurance?
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The second annual benchmark study by Ponemon Institute in Traverse City, MI, sponsored by ID Experts, finds that the frequency of data breaches in healthcare organizations surveyed has increased by 32%.
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Two years of the Fall Prevention -- Safety Monitor Volunteer Program at Hartford (CT) Hospital have yielded significant results, says Christine Waszynski, APRN, a geriatric nurse practitioner and clinical nurse specialist in the geriatrics program. (See the charts above and on p. 20.) In addition to reducing falls 46%, analysis of the bed check results shows these findings:
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Some of the best ways to prevent falls require personal, hands-on attention to individual patients, but hospitals don't have enough staff to provide as much of that tending as they would like. One hospital has found that volunteers are eager to do the job, and it has cut falls by a whopping 46% as a result.
