One hundred thousand preventable deaths from medical errors in hospitals each year: That is the usual statistic cited by patient safety advocates. It comes from a 10-year-old report issued by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. The fact is, though, that the death and injury rate could be substantially higher. No….
Continue ReadingHospitals
The Hospital “Revolving Door” — New Information on a Big Danger
Medicare has just published new information that helps patients determine if their local hospitals have a dangerous “revolving door” problem with some of their treatments. The revolving door happens when a patient is sent home but then has to be readmitted to the hospital within one month. That means either that the patient was sent….
Continue ReadingThousands Exposed to Hep-C by Rogue Surgery Tech
The news from Colorado that a drug-addicted surgery technician had exposed thousands of patients to the Hepatitis-C virus raises questions about the institutions’ procedures for protecting patients. According to news accounts, the surgery tech, Kristen Parker, swapped her dirty syringes, filled with saline, for clean ones filled with Fentanyl, in operating rooms at Rose Medical….
Continue ReadingHeart Failure: An Expensive Revolving Door
Nobody wants to go home from the hospital only to be readmitted within a few weeks. But that revolving door is very common in conditions like heart failure, where the patient’s heart muscle doesn’t pump effectively after it has been weakened by heart attack or other heart disease. The open secret of the hospital industry….
Continue Reading