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A floor nurse discovered she had hepatitis C six years after testing positive for the disease. The nurse and her former spouse sued the nurses employer for withholding the information and were awarded $2.9 million and $575,000, respectively.
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Medical injuries during hospitalization result in longer hospital stays, higher costs, and a high number of deaths, according to a study from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Postoperative bloodstream infections had the most serious consequences.
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Just because the final Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act eased some of the prior burden on hospitals doesnt mean you should go overboard in trying to divine exactly what is and isnt allowed.
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Risk managers have struggled for a long time to interpret the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, but the recent release of the final rule promised to clear up a great deal of disagreement and differing takes on what the law requires. Some of that promise was fulfilled, but there still is plenty of room to worry about what EMTALA really means, say legal experts who continue to study the law for its many nuances.
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A 70-year-old man went to the emergency department complaining of shortness of breath. Although chest X-rays showed a suspicious mass in his left lung, physicians did not notify him or his primary care doctor. Nine months later, when he returned to the hospital complaining of shortness of breath, physicians discovered the man had lung cancer. A jury awarded the patient and his wife more than $2.8 million.
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Incomes are up slightly for health care risk managers this year, but you may be staying much later at the office.
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One of the best methods for eliminating costly back injuries in health care settings is to stop lifting patients. No lifting equals no back injuries, the experts say.
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You might think youve done enough root-cause analyses that theyre old hat by now and you can just cruise through the process. If so, youre probably making common mistakes that create inconclusive analyses that fall short of addressing the problem.
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One of the hottest sessions at the recent meeting of the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management in Nashville, TN, addressed the recently issued final rule for the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.
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Leading epidemiologists say a global return of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) which wreaked havoc on the health care systems that had to deal with it is almost inevitable.