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  • Being there: Building a trusting relationship with your workers

    Honest answer: Do employees consider you to be trustworthy?
  • LRC: Hospital's alleged failure to recognize syndrome leads to permanent injuries, $800,000 settlement

    A 58-year-old man presented to his local VA hospital with lower back pain and left leg pain. The decision was made to perform a laminectomy.
  • Expert: Drugs diverted for use in murders

    A group of anesthesiologists is warning that, in addition to the perennial problem of drugs being diverted for personal use or resale, some powerful drugs are stolen from hospitals to be used as murder weapons.
  • Hospitals can specify focus for OB safety

    When the OB safety initiative sponsored by BETA Healthcare Group (BETA) started two years ago, it addressed the most important issues indicated by the company's OB claims, says Heather Gocke, RNC-OB, LNC, CPHRM, C-EFM, director of risk management and quality assessment at BETA's Glendale, CA, office.
  • Define expectations to see improvements

    Saying you put patient safety first is good, but you won't see any results until you specify what behaviors you expect to see, says Ann Rhoades, former chief people officer for Southwest Airlines and Doubletree Hotels, and one of the five founding executives of JetBlue Airways.
  • What makes clinicians fearful to speak up? The 'undiscussables'

    For years, risk managers and other healthcare leaders have been pushing physicians and staff to speak up when they see a dangerous situation, but new data suggests the effort has been only moderately successful at best. The focus on providing tools to improve patient safety might have overshadowed what really matters most: behavioral changes.
  • LRC: Hospital is first to settle under voluntary SRDP

    Saints Medical Center in Lowell, MA, announced recently that it will pay $579,000 to settle alleged Medicare billing violations, the first settlement since the publication of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) voluntary self-referral disclosure protocol (SRDP).
  • LRC: $200,000 verdict granted in child's death

    A mother took her 4-year-old daughter to the emergency department with symptoms of gagging and watery diarrhea. The physician caring for the child determined that the child was not suffering from dehydration and provided a prescription for the child's nausea. The child's symptoms worsened. After the parent was told by the hospital to allow the medicine additional time to work, the child died. A verdict was entered against the hospital in the amount of $200,000.
  • Insurer focuses on OB, cuts rates for excellence

    Hundreds of obstetrical nurses, midwives, residents, and doctors completing an intensive continuing education program focused on risk management are helping their hospitals lower professional liability costs through an obstetrics-intensive patient safety program.
  • Readmissions costly, impact quality of life

    In today's healthcare environment, as patients are being discharged from the hospital sicker and quicker than ever before, some patients are in and out of the hospital as if they are going through a revolving door, says Catherine M. Mullahy, RN, BS, CRRN, CCM, president and founder of Mullahy & Associates, a case management training and consulting company based in Huntington, NY.