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If youre not moving, start. On April 14, covered entities under HIPAA are expected to be in compliance with the new Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information.
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There is an extremely high level of confusion, misunderstanding, frustration, anxiety, fear, and anger in a broad range of people and organizations as the April 14 compliance date for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy rule nears. Thats the finding of the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics, a statutory public advisory body to the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the area of health data and statistics.
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Recent news reports of patients who lived for months with surgical items mistakenly left in them has spurred the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN) to urge that such incidents be reported to the national system it has set up to record such errors.
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The National Quality Forum (NQF) announced recently that it had approved 26 safe practices that should be universally utilized in health care to reduce the risk of adverse events. Four additional practices will continue to be evaluated and may be approved in the coming months.
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Translating medical information for patients who dont speak English has always been a difficult issue for health care providers, but evidence is mounting to suggest that health care providers risk major lawsuits from medical errors traced to inadequate translation.
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A nursing home patient developed a cyst on her labia, and her treating gynecologist ordered a sitz bath to relieve the condition. However, the nurses administering the bath thought they were to treat the affected area with steam and the patient was burned with steam and scalding water. She died seven months later, and the family brought suit against the owner and operator of the facility.
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After several visits to its family physician, an 11-month-old child was taken to a hospital emergency department (ED). The child was then transferred to a childrens hospital, where a test for tuberculosis (TB) was positive. While the TB had gone undiagnosed and untreated, the child developed meningitis, which eventually led to brain damage.
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Recently released guidelines on how to safely use e-mail to communicate with patients will become the standard of care in short order, says one expert. That means health providers must comply with the recommendations quickly or risk increased liability.
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Questions still remain about the plan to vaccinate some health care workers against smallpox as health care leaders debate the safety of the vaccine, how it will worsen the shortage of personnel, and its potential liability concerns.
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The Center for Patient Advocacy recently released a survey of surgeons, operating room nurses, and consumers, which suggests that health care professionals have serious concerns about the reuse of single-use medical devices and their impact on patient health and safety.