Two recent events highlight the need for easy access to information about a hospital’s record of mistakes and violation of standards. The Florida Supreme Court ruled on Thursday March 6th that patients have a right to see records on past mistakes made by hospitals and health care providers, including very old records, and that laws….
Continue ReadingStandard of Care--Hospitals
HIV Patients Still Snubbed By Doctors and Nurses
When AIDS was first discovered and little was known about it, that ignorance resulted in a great deal of paranoia, ostracism and cruelty towards AIDS patients. Now, more than two decades after we have known about AIDS and during which the disease has been studied and treated if not cured, we might be tempted to….
Continue ReadingA Collaborative Approach to Fighting Bedsores
Bedsores, a common hospital problem, are not just ugly nuisances. They can turn into deep and extremely painful wounds that go clear to the bone, and can be fatal when infected. That is why it is encouraging to find that hospitals and nursing homes are beginning to take a highly effective collaborative approach towards preventing….
Continue ReadingGuidelines for Hand Hygiene in Professional Settings
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has an article on hand hygiene. Much of it is somewhat technical, categorizing different types and levels of sterilization precautions and measurements of efficacy. If you scroll down, however, there are quite a few practical details that may be helpful. Much of it is common sense: fingernails….
Continue ReadingEmergency Room Waits Getting Longer
If the number of emergency rooms go down and the number of medical emergencies rise, it stands to reason that the average waiting time in emergency rooms would get longer, resulting in more problems and even deaths. That is exactly what is happening right now in the U.S, as a new study from Harvard Medical….
Continue ReadingU.S.A. Has the Most Preventable Deaths
Out of nineteen industrialized nations, the U.S. has the most deaths that could have been prevented by access to timely, effective medical care. Ellen Nolte and Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine performed the study, looking at deaths before the age of seventy-five caused by numerous diseases and complications. They….
Continue ReadingWhere are the Illinois Hospital Safety Reports?
By January 1st of this year, Illinois was to have established a system for reporting and reviewing egregious hospital errors–e.g. sponges left inside patients after surgery. But it has not done so. Illinois has also failed to fulfill other elements of the hospital safety legislation the state passed four years ago. For instance, the Illinois….
Continue ReadingHospitals Dangerously Slow in Treating Heart Attacks
It is safer to have a heart attack in an airport or casino than in a hospital. Why? One reason is that many hospitals still rely on old-fashioned defibrillators rather than the newer ones found in public places. The new ones are fully automated, faster and easy to use. Chances of surviving a heart attack….
Continue ReadingShould Hospitals Pay for Their Mistakes?
What happens when a hospital makes a mistake in medical care, and the harm to the patient results in the need for another medical treatment? It used to be that the patient was charged for this subsequent treatment, which would have been unnecessary but for the hospital’s error. An article in the Journal of the….
Continue ReadingElder Abuse: Nursing Homes Often Use Anti-Psychotics to “Maintain Order”
Shockingly, nursing homes having been giving elderly residents anti-psychotic drugs–not to combat actual psychosis, but rather to quiet symptoms of Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia and make the patients more docile and controllable. This overuse of anti-psychotics is so rampant that it accounts for why Medicaid has recently spent more money on anti-psychotics than….
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