-
Many health care providers are considering adopting the idea of a hotline that patients and family members can call when they think their concerns are being taken lightly by their immediate caregivers, but some risk managers might wonder if the phone will be ringing off the hook with trivial complaints and misunderstandings.
-
All patients treated in the Community Health Network's hospitals in Indiana are given a brochure that describes the Call FIRST (Family Initiated Rapid Screening Team) that serves as a safety net when patients or family members think their concerns are not being addressed. These are some excerpts from the brochure:
-
With its best-selling antipsychotic drug Zyprexa the target of thousands of legal claims, Eli Lilly and Co., based in Indianapolis, is trying to reassure psychiatrists they face little malpractice risk for prescribing such drugs.
-
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in Rockville, MD, recently released 17 new toolkits to help health care providers and patients prevent medical errors.
-
News: A nursing home resident with a history of difficulty in swallowing choked to death while eating a piece of brisket. Although staff attempted to perform the Heimlich maneuver and CPR on her, the woman died.
-
Health care workers who were vaccinated as children may be protected against fatal smallpox infection even if they declined to participate in recent immunization efforts, according to a recent study.
-
Graduates of certain U.S. medical schools are more likely to be sued than others, according to a recent report in a safety journal (Quality and Safety in Health Care 2003; 12:330-336).
-
More than one-third of hospital medication errors that reach the patient involve seniors, making them an especially vulnerable population in U.S. health care facilities, according to the most recent data on adverse events collected by the United States Pharmacopeia, a nonprofit organization in Rockville, MD.
-
Pediatrics program just the beginning of safety overhaul; Duke identifies corrective plan of action for patient safety
-
A 16-year-old high school football star was in the back seat of a car when the driver lost control and ran off the road. He underwent emergency surgery at a hospital for a ruptured stomach. However, the treating physicians and staff failed to diagnose and treat his fractured spine. The delay in treatment and failure to immobilize the patient resulted in the teen-ager being permanently paralyzed.
