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Free wireless Internet access, known as Wi-Fi, is offered in many retail establishments and public buildings, allowing customers and visitors to access the Internet with their laptop computers and cell phones. But as health care providers venture into offering this convenience, questions arise about network security and possible breaches of sensitive data.
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Risk managers have struggled for years to reconcile the notion of a "no-blame" culture with incidents in which - systemic problems or not - one individual clearly committed a willful violation of procedure. Embracing the philosophy is easier when the evidence suggests the health care worker made a mistake, even a failure of attention or diligence, but willful and even malicious misbehavior seems to pose a dilemma.
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It has been 10 years since the Institute of Medicine's report To Err is Human revolutionized patient safety by encouraging a focus on systemic flaws that allow errors to occur, rather than blaming the individual who actually made the mistake. From the start, however, risk managers have struggled with the idea of how to avoid a "culture of blame" without letting people get away with extraordinary negligence or deliberate misbehavior.
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A woman underwent a hysterectomy. During the procedure, an endotracheal tube was inserted, which resulted in a perforation of the woman's esophagus.
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A woman presented at her gynecologist's office with complaints of post-menopausal bleeding. The gynecologist ordered a pelvic ultrasound, which displayed abnormal findings.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta reports that data from 60 U.S. hospitals show health care workers suffer about 384,325 sharps and percutaneous injuries annually. These findings were presented recently at the International Conference on Nosocomial and Healthcare-Associated Infections in Atlanta.
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A patient hands you an insurance card with multiple numbers, numbers that are next to impossible to locate, or no numbers at all.
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With most hospitals looking more closely than ever at their bottom lines, the last thing that patient access needs is high turnover. Not everyone is cut out for the access department, however. It's a lot easier to hire correctly than to try to work with - or in extreme cases, fire - a person who's not right for the job.
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When she stepped into a new role as a patient access manager at Menasha, WI-based Affinity Health System, Jackie Mitchler says she was amazed at the amount of skills and information that all of her staff had to know and learn.
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When you think of hospital staff on the "front lines" during a flu epidemic, emergency department and other clinical staff probably come to mind. Don't forget that patient access staff also are in close contact with patients, many of whom have contagious illnesses including H1N1.