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A middle-aged man was taken to the hospital complaining of pain in his lower back and abdomen. The man was given pain medication and a muscle relaxant and discharged. After his pain persisted, the man went to another hospital, where he was given anti-inflammatory medications and discharged. A few days later, the man was taken by ambulance back to the first hospital, where he suffered cardiac arrest and died.
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Sometimes the most effective strategies for those problems that plague every health care facility are not high tech and don't require a highly paid consultant.
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Everyone knows you should never alter medical records after the fact, right? But if it is so clear to everyone, why do medical malpractice defense attorneys repeat that rule like a mantra, and why do they all have plenty of anecdotes about defendants trying to improve the medical record?
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It can be a common occurrence for risk managers, but it still makes your heart skip a little when you learn that there is a new claim or lawsuit against your facility. What do you do?
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Two Epidemiologic Intelligence Service officers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention visited the Endoscopy Clinic of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas to investigate cases of hepatitis C and noted lapses in injection safety. Practices differed among the nurse anesthetists. This is an excerpt of their report:
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At the Endoscopy Clinic of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas, it was not uncommon for a nurse anesthetist to remove the needle from a syringe and reuse the syringe even on another patient, public health investigators report.
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Almost one-third of workers with arthritis and 7% of all workers face significant work-related limitations, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Employers have discovered a way to lower their health plan costs: Have healthier employees. Increasingly, employers are creating strong incentives for healthy behavior or penalizing employees with risky behavior, such as smoking. But employees aren't thrilled about the new approach, according to a survey by Hewitt Associates, a human resources consulting firm based in Lincolnshire, IL.
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Faced with an aging work force of nurses, hospitals are beginning to remake the work environment to keep nurses at the bedside. When the AARP released its list of the nation's 50 "Best Employers of People over 50" earlier this year, half of them were hospitals or other health care employers.
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In early July, The Joint Commission issued a Sentinel Event Alert on behavior among health care professionals and its effect on care.
