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The U.S. District Court in Cheyenne, WY, has awarded $50,000 to a woman stuck by a used needle while visiting a patient at one of Banner Health Systems hospitals in that state. A hospital employee had left the needle lodged in a heat register.
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The University of Illinois Hospital has paid $2.3 million to settle a lawsuit that charged it and two other school-affiliated hospitals with manipulating patients diagnoses to get them new livers.
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While recovering from emergency surgery, a 71-year old patient developed decubitus ulcers acute enough to cause nerve damage and necessitate plastic surgery. The hospital staff and two attending physicians failed to closely monitor the elderly patient during recovery despite his known underlying complications, which included alcohol dependency and heavy smoking.
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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.
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The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has published a revised survey instrument and proposed administration instructions for the patient perceptions of care survey known as HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Health Plans).
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Hospitals received an unwelcome New Years present from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in the form of a new mandate: They must update their respiratory protection programs and conduct annual fit-testing of any employee wearing a respirator for TB or any other reason.
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If public health authorities want to convince health care workers to get vaccinated against influenza, they wont mention a recent study at a Denver hospital. It found that this years vaccine did not reduce the likelihood of getting influenzalike illness. Yet that study is far from the final word on the subject.
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A wall-to-wall, comprehensive Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspection resulted in 41 alleged health and safety violations and $91,500 in fines for New Britain (CT) General Hospital.
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As of Jan. 1, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires employers to use the revised OSHA 300 form, which includes a separate column for occupational hearing loss.
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Its just gotten much easier for Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations surveyors to size up how your organization compares to others. The ORYX and core measure data are part of the Joint Commissions initiative to look at hospitals in a more uniform manner, so they can compare one hospital to another, explains Judy Homa-Lowry, RN, MS, CPHQ, president of Homa-Lowry Healthcare Consulting, based in Metamora, MI.
