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Once a privacy breach occurs with a patient's medical records, the risk manager must act quickly and decisively, says Layna Cook, JD, an attorney specializing in health care risk management with the law firm McGlinchey Stafford in Baton Rouge, LA. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires mitigation when a violation occurs, Cook notes.
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The Joint Commission's sentinel event database includes five cases that resulted in four deaths and affected four adults and one child, according to Mark R. Chassin, MD, MPP, MPH, president of The Joint Commission.
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The criminal charge filed against a patient who was forced to undergo a rectal exam may have been one factor that led to a civil lawsuit against the hospital, say legal observers.
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Two hospitals in Boston are taking the lead in patient safety by pledging to eliminate all preventable patient harm within four years, a goal that some patient safety experts applaud, but which others say is not a realistic goal.
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News: A woman admitted to the hospital put her hand on a metal railing by her bed in her hospital room. The part of the metal rail that the woman grabbed had a towel draped over it, and a used hypodermic needle was in the towel.
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News: A man was working with chemicals at his job when a chemical cleaning solution splashed into his eye. He presented to a nearby emergency department, where doctors irrigated his eye to remove the chemical.
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A renewed focus on safety issues with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines has upped the ante for risk managers, says the leading authority on this issue.
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A hospital in New York City is being sued by a former patient who says staff forced him to undergo a rectal examination even after he vehemently refused and fought the doctor and nurses, who then sedated him and went ahead with the exam.
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Risk managers who fret so much about compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) should worry at least that much about the potential liability from state laws addressing data breaches, say experts on personal data security.
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Risk managers and patient safety experts often run into resistance from physicians when they advocate electronic prescription systems, known as e-prescribing, even though the patient safety benefits are clear. But now a new survey suggests that physicians may be coming around.
