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New research continues to dispel the once widely accepted belief that premature infants suffer brain injury from a lack of oxygen usually attributed to obstetrician error. In fact, infection plays a larger role, according to a high-risk obstetrician and assistant professor at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.
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Health care providers in Texas have agreed to pay $12.5 million to settle a lawsuit stemming from the theft of an unattended ambulance, which was then involved in an accident that killed a father and seriously injured the rest of his family. The plaintiffs attorney says the settlement underscores the need for hospitals to secure ambulances and other vehicles.
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When risk managers first heard that there wouldnt be enough flu vaccine from the two manufacturers still providing it, many probably reacted with the same thought: Thats what you get when money-hungry trial lawyers run health care companies out of business. But is that really the cause of the flu vaccine shortage?
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If the flu season hits your community hard, will your health care staff suffer because they didnt get enough flu shots? Quite possibly. But there is something risk managers can do.
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Patient safety is on everyones minds these days, but how do you know how well your organization already is doing on this topic? One way is a tool offered by the Agency for Health-care Research and Quality (AHRQ), an arm of the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, DC.
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The 2003 transplant error at Duke University Hospital in Durham, NC, that led to the appointment of a new patient safety officer at Duke University Hospital System in Durham, NC, was traced to a lack of redundancy in the system that ensured donor organs matched the patient.
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Liquids on floors represent the biggest risk for falls in health care facilities, but risk managers often overlook the need to assess the fall risk of a particular area with wet surfaces, not dry ones, says an expert.
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Five years after the landmark Institute of Medicine report, To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System, not enough is being done to address medication errors, warns the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) in Huntingdon Valley, PA.
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This case involves several issues related to standard of care and possibly to causation, which are subject to review by the facilitys risk manager.