amednews: 1 in 3 patients harmed during hospital stay :: April 18, 2011 ... American Medical News

By Kevin B. O'Reilly, amednews staff. Posted April 18, 2011.

One-third of hospital patients experience adverse events and about 7% are harmed permanently or die as a result, according to a study that detected patient safety problems at a far higher rate than other methods.

The study, in April's Health Affairs, echoes two reports issued in November 2010 that showed rates of adverse events hovering near 25% among hospitalized Medicare patients nationwide and at 10 North Carolina hospitals.

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The findings draw attention to the safety troubles that have lingered in U.S. hospitals in the 12 years since the Institute of Medicine's headline-grabbing report "To Err is Human." The study cited research estimating that up to 98,000 patients die each year due to preventable medical errors.

"This is one of the best studies that now gives us a sense of how much harm is happening to patients in American hospitals," said Robert Wachter, MD, chief of the medical service at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, who was not involved in the research. "There is a tremendous amount of harm befalling patients who are admitted to hospitals and humongous opportunities for improvement."

via ama-assn.org

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Hung-over surgeons more error-prone | Reuters

Surgeons might want to steer clear of alcohol the night before operating, according to a new report that shows a hangover fuels errors during simulated surgery.

While there is no question about the immediate effects of alcohol on surgical skills, there aren't any rules for how much doctors can drink the day before going to the operating room.

"Historically, the medical profession has had a reputation for high rates of alcohol consumption," Anthony Gallagher, of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and colleagues write in the Archives of Surgery.

"It is likely that surgeons are unaware that next-day surgical performance may be compromised as a result of significant alcohol intake."

To measure the degree of that impairment, the researchers invited eight surgeons and 16 students out for a night on the town.

via reuters.com

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Not Running a Hospital: Painfully slow

You can already imagine the responses. "That's just in North Carolina." "Our patients are sicker." "There are problems with the data."

What would prompt that? This New York Times article, citing a forthcoming NEJM study about medical errors in North Carolina. Here's the lede:

Efforts to make hospitals safer for patients are falling short, researchers report in the first large study in a decade to analyze harm from medical care and to track it over time.

The study, conducted from 2002 to 2007 in 10 North Carolina hospitals, found that harm to patients was common and that the number of incidents did not decrease over time. The most common problems were complications from procedures or drugs and hospital-acquired infections.

via runningahospital.blogspot.com

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When to sue your doctor or hospital Should you? | Eye Opener: The Nash & Associates Blog | %post_tags%

Recently, a CNN article titled “Harmed in the Hospital? Should You Sue?” described the story of a two-year-old baby with a septic infection who waited about five hours in the emergency department before being seen by a physician. The child ultimately needed several amputations as a result of the delay in medical treatment.

Using this tragic story as a point of reference, the article suggests a number of criteria to help patients decide when to sue and when not to sue a health care provider. For example, the article correctly suggests that a patient who has not sustained injury should not sue a health care provider even if the health care provider’s conduct might have been negligent. In medical malpractice cases, a plaintiff seeks monetary compensation for injuries. If there are no identifiable injuries, there simply isn’t a case for medical malpractice.

via medicalmalpracticeblog.nashandassociates.com

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How safe is your hospital? - chicagotribune.com

Just before it was disclosed that a medical error at the University of Chicago led to the death of James Tyree, a well-known financier and philanthropist being treated for cancer, I was putting together a presentation examining the quality of care at some of the area's best-known hospitals.

Using publicly available data, I told a meeting of local health care executives that there were warning flags at several institutions, including the U. of C. Tyree, ironically, would have known about any actual problems in far greater detail. He served on the board of the hospital where he died from an air embolism in a dialysis catheter, and hospital officials said in an interview that they regularly report safety data to board members.

There's an important distinction between great doctoring and great safety. The U. of C. has a reputation for outstanding cancer care. That's likely the reason that Tyree, suffering from stomach cancer and pneumonia, had a relatively good prognosis when he entered the hospital and why his death so shocked his family and friends. But as a wise physician once warned, "Every hospital should have a plaque at its entrance that reads, 'There are some patients whom we cannot help; there are none whom we cannot harm.'"

via chicagotribune.com

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