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News: A mother went to two area emergency departments on three consecutive days, complaining of nausea, vomiting, headaches, and numbness in her extremities. Each time, she was prescribed medication to treat the nausea, diagnosed with a possible gastrointestinal infection, and sent home. Just days after her third ED visit, the woman passed out and fell down a stairway. She was taken to a third hospital, where a CT scan showed a brain tumor, and physicians determined that the woman had suffered a brain infarction.
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Risk management continues to be an exciting career opportunity that offers new challenges all the time, says Georgene Saliba, RN, HRM, CPHRM, FASHRM, administrator for claims and risk management at Lehigh Valley Hospital & Health Network in Allentown, PA, and president of the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management (ASHRM) in Chicago.
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With all the concerns lately about the economy, health care risk managers at least can take some solace in knowing that their median income is holding steady with indications for upward movement.
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As Healthcare Risk Management enters 2009, we celebrate 30 years of serving health care risk managers across the country. It has been an eventful three decades, with many changes in technology, philosophy, and strategies.
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The health care industry is awaiting a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Wyeth v. Levine, a case that could determine the future of drug labeling and potential liability for providers who don't follow those instructions to the letter.
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A ruling in favor of the plaintiff could threaten the authority of the FDA by giving more power to state courts, says Maureen Martin, JD, senior fellow for legal affairs with The Heartland Institute in Chicago. She says the case could lead to a wholesale expansion of state regulation in other areas of law for any industry subject to intensive federal regulation. If that happens, the FDA will become ineffective, she predicts.
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With The Joint Commission's recent announcement that rude language and hostile behavior pose serious threats to patient safety and quality of care, risk managers are on high alert for disruptive behavior and searching for ways to combat it.
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A first-of-its-kind survey of physicians by the Massachusetts Medical Society on the practice of "defensive medicine" - tests, procedures, referrals, hospitalizations, or prescriptions ordered by physicians out of fear of being sued - has shown that the practice is widespread and adds billions of dollars to the cost of health care in that state alone.
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The implementation of an online order entry system at the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor has produced a 29% reduction in medication errors while at the same time cutting by 40% the time between ordering and administering urgent medications.
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It is human nature to take shortcuts or ignore the burdensome steps sometimes involved in doing a task the right way, and when there is no negative consequence, the deviation can be reinforced.
