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A convicted murderer who sought a reprieve so he could donate his liver to his ill sister was executed in May after Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniel was advised by doctors that Gregory Scott Johnson was not a good candidate to be a donor, and that his sister, Debra Otis, would likely receive a donor organ through regular channels within a matter of months. Johnsons bid to become an organ donor resurrected debate about the ethics of accepting organs from condemned inmates.
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Illinois has become the first state to enact legislation based on the idea that an apology might serve as the most effective means to stop some medical malpractice lawsuits.
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The National Institutes of Health (NIH) found its sweeping new ethics changes were proving a hard pill for its employees to swallow. As a result, they supplemented it with proposals that respond to actual and threatened resignations by some of the key NIH employees who say the new regulation, which requires employees to divest themselves of outside consulting and investments with pharmaceutical and biotech industries, is too restrictive.
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The use of opioids for pain relief is limited by what some have called opiophobia, or the fear that patients will become addicted to the drugs. The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has spelled out a means of addressing the drawbacks to opioid therapy and reducing the fear of prescribing opioids.
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A new web site launched by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Hospital Quality Alliance allows you to compare 4200 hospitals across the country, even by individual departments within hospitals.
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A near miss is an event that signals a weakness in the delivery of health care services. If the weakness is not identified and remedied, there could be significant consequences in the future.
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Emergency department visits in the United States reached a record high of nearly 114 million in 2003, up from 90.3 million visits
in 1993, while the number of EDs decreased by 12% during the same period, to 3,910, according to a report released recently by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Think “hotel,” rather than “hospital,” when it comes to taking care of your patients.
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In much the way 401k investment plans forever changed retirement benefits and led to the realignment of the financial industry in the 1980s, a concept called "consumer-directed health care" appears poised to transform the way health care is delivered.
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Approximately 92% of hospitals surveyed for a recent report by the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers said at least part of their bad debt could be classified as charity care.
