-
In 2010, the number of unintended retentions of a foreign body jumped to the highest level since The Joint Commission started tracking statistics in 1995: 133 reported events. Already, through the third quarter of 2011, there have been 136 incidents reported to the agency.
-
It could happen, says Eric Chiu, founder & president of HyTrust, a company in Mountain View, CA, that specializes in access control for data. It likely would be caused by someone employed or formerly employed at your organization, he says.
-
In the first weeks of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, a physician became ill at a Chicago hospital and tested positive for the virus. Then other healthcare workers became ill and tested positive an outbreak that began at a time when the virus was not widespread in the community.
-
In an era when controversial mandatory flu vaccine policies threaten to end up in some high court as a cause célèbre, The Joint Commission is urging healthcare organizations to go for the proverbial gold.
-
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles will have to pay almost $4.7 million to a surgeon who claims the hospital retaliated against him for blowing the whistle on unsafe practices in his department, unless the hospital manages to have the award overturned.
-
This month's SDS Accreditation Update includes a focus on the perennial and potentially disastrous problem of patient identification errors.
-
The kids are back in school (Thank GOD!), the heat is starting to break, the floods are receding, and the fires are burning out.
-
Claims denials often occurred at Valley Health System in Ridgewood, NJ, because the patient's disposition didn't match up with what the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) required to authorize a procedure, reports Maura Corvino, MSOL, RN, CEN, assistant vice president for emergency services and patient access.
-
A woman stole paper surgery schedules for about 4,500 patients at an Alabama hospital and used the names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers to commit identity fraud, according to a media report.
-
The final "Patient Blood Management Performance Measures," formerly named the "Blood Management (BM) Measure Set," have been placed in The Joint Commission Library of Other Measures and are available for all healthcare organizations to use in internal quality improvement initiatives.