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All the hospitals where infant abductions have occurred identified unmonitored elevator or stairwell access to the postpartum and nursery areas as a root cause, according to information from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.
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A recent incident in which a surgeon allegedly arrived drunk for a procedure illustrates an important lesson about how broadly risk managers should educate staff about the concept of patient safety, says one expert.
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Imagine a scenario in which a patient dies from a medication error and then things just go downhill from there. As things get worse, the only good thing is that youre bound to learn something useful from the experience.
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Fetal heart monitoring does not identify babies who are diagnosed with white matter brain injury after birth, according to a new study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
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Question: How much do we need to worry about the liability risk of patients committing suicide, as long were not treating them for a psychiatric problem? Cant we argue that we had no duty to detect their suicidal tendencies when treating them for something completely unrelated?
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The latest survey of 631 providers, payers, companies, and clearinghouses by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) indicates that as of mid-January, only half had completed testing for the Transaction and Code Standards (TCS), which standardized what information must be contained in electronic claims and how it should be transmitted.
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A security consulting firm that is providing security risk assessment and compliance review services for small health care related businesses says one way to increase incentives for physicians to come into compliance with HIPAA requirements would be for malpractice insurers to offer reduced premiums to those who have done a risk assessment and are moving forward on implementation.
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A nonpunitive policy on investigating errors yields better results, especially if you couple it with an amnesty period that promises employees can confess their mistakes without threat of punishment, says Elaine Shaw, director of quality resources at Good Samaritan Hospital in Vincennes, IN.
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Have you made your labor and delivery unit a veritable fortress with high-tech equipment and strict policies to prevent infant abductions, while leaving the back door wide open? Children in the pediatrics unit can be just as vulnerable as infants, experts say, but risk managers too often put all their focus on protecting the newborns while devoting relatively few resources to other young patients.
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Larry Veltman, MD, chairman of the department obstetrics and gynecology at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland, OR, and medical director of the healthcare professional liability division for the Farmers Insurance Group of Companies, offers this list of the most common failures that lead to OB malpractice lawsuits.
