Patient safety could improve if workers who report errors were ...
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EDMONTON (CP) - Patient safety would improve if health workers who report hospital errors were protected from legal action, says a new report.
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A hospital under scrutiny about patient safety admits care failures after the deaths of two elderly women.
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The Massachusetts Hospital Association is expected to unveil an ambitious program today to improve patient safety in the state's 105 hospitals, including public posting of nurses' workloads at individual hospitals and the number of hours each day they spend directly caring for patients.
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WASHINGTON Oct 27, 2004 - Citing statistics that one in 10 hospital patients are victims of preventable medical mistakes, the World Health Organization on Wednesday announced an initiative to create a &quot;culture of safety&quot; in health care.
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Arguing that the country&#39;s system for monitoring drug safety is haphazard and ineffectual, editors of a leading medical journal Monday called for a radical overhaul and suggested the creation of a new independent drug safety board.
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Nearly 70 percent of Massachusetts hospitals have failed to install special computer systems for ordering drugs for patients, mostly because they carry big price tags. But a new report from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative says the state's hospitals would end up saving money if they install these sophisticated systems to reduce medical errors.
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NEW YORK  - Contrary to what might be expected, the quality of care that patients receive increases with the number of medical conditions they have, according to a report in The New England Journal of Medicine.
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One-third say they or a family member have experienced a medical error, a new survey finds. By Karen Pallarito. WEDNESDAY, Nov. 17 (HealthDayNews) -- Five years after the release of a landmark report revealing
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WASHINGTON Sept. 23, 2004 - Requiring doctors and hospitals to report publicly on their performance and tying their pay to the results would dramatically reduce avoidable deaths and costs attributable to
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a potential problem that led a national group of emergency-room doctors Monday to call for better preparation for the oncoming
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The U.S. government needs to step up its push for electronic health records because they are not being adopted quickly enough, a group of health advocates said Friday.U.S. healthcare providers continue to make errors that hurt tens of thousands of patients each year, and e-health records could prevent many of those problems, said Dr. Alan Lotvin, senior vice president of oncology for Magellan Health Services Inc. The U.S. healthcare system is failing patients &quot;despite the fact we have the knowledge and the technology to really do a much, much better job.&quot;About 3.5 percent of all U.S. hospital stays have a drug error associated with them, leading to more than 100,000 significant medical problems and nearly 30,000 deaths each year, said Lotvin, speaking at an e-health forum sponsored by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) and the Health IT Now Coalition.U.S. residents should have a &quot;sense of outrage&quot; when confronted with these prescription errors, which would largely be prevented with e-health records, Lotvin said. He compared the U.S. health-care system&#39;s record to Amazon.com, which received 2,000 orders per minute during the 2005 holiday shopping season.&quot;I use Amazon a lot -- I have never gotten the wrong book,&quot; he said. &quot;We can&#39;t seem to get the pills from the pharmacy in the basement to Mrs. Smith in room 631 correctly. This is not acceptable.&quot;Lotvin called on the U.S. Congress to pass legislation that would mandate that healthcare providers report their error rates. He also called for a law that would require healthcare providers that have made mistakes on a patient to pay for any subsequent care required. Many medical errors can result in long hospital stays or expensive procedures, and in many cases, patients or their insurance providers pay, he said.&quot;You break it, you fix it,&quot; he said. &quot;That&#39;s a very simple concept. It&#39;s been around in china shops for years.&quot;In addition, the ITIF, in a report released Friday, recommended several steps Congress could take to encourage the adoption of e-health records:*&#160;Congress should pass legislation that supports the adoption of national health data standards. The report mentioned two bills that provide funding and organization at a national level, the Wired for Health Care Quality Act in the Senate, and the Promoting Health Information Technology Act in the House of Representatives.*&#160;Congress should pass a bill to support the creation of health record data banks, data centers where individual patients could store and control their health data. The Independent Health Record Trust Act in the House would regulate data bank operators, prohibiting them from charging fees to health-care providers for accessing or updating an e-health record upon permission of the patient.*&#160;The U.S. government should lead by example by covering the monthly access fees at health record data banks for patients covered by government-funded programs such as Medicare and the State Children&#39;s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).*&#160;Congress should allow patients free access to e-health records held by healthcare providers. Currently, medical privacy laws allow patients to get paper copies of their medical records, but healthcare providers can charge fees for copying and mailing those records. Congress should phase out those fees, a measure that would encourage doctors to move to electronic records, ITIF said.Currently, only about 25 percent of U.S. doctors use e-health records, and only about 10 percent of them have e-health records fully integrated into their practices, ITIF said. But in Sweden, 90 percent of doctors use e-health records, and in Denmark, 88 percent do, according to the ITIF.That shows that adoption in the U.S. is a matter of the right policies and incentives, said Robert Atkinson, ITIF&#39;s president. &quot;This is not rocket science,&quot; he said.More people need to push Congress to create incentives for e-health records, added Nancy Johnson, a former U.S. representative and co-chairwoman of the Health IT Now Coalition.&quot;Why, when we know this would help so much, are we not doing it?&quot; Johnson said. &quot;We know how to deliver a higher quality of care, and we&#39;re not doing it.&quot;
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Requiring doctors and hospitals to report publicly on their performance and tying their pay to the results would dramatically reduce avoidable deaths and costs attributable to poor medical care, says a new report from an organization
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The BBC has learnt of serious incidents at a major Welsh hospital, with worries about patient safety.
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The nation&#39;s leading patient-safety oversight group will call Wednesday for hospitals to do more to keep patients from &quot;waking up&quot; during surgery - a sometimes horrifying experience
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Our position is: Greater drug safety needs to be coupled with awareness that some risk is inherent in medicine. When it comes to assurances of drug safety, consumers would be advised to heed George Bernard Shaw&#39;s warning to beware of what they wish for.
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Gaps in insurance arenât the only problem with the medical system. Hospitals should be required to report more information.
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The Food and Drug Administration needs more staff, funding and authority over the drug industry to better track the safety of medicines after they reach the market, an Institute of Medicine report said Friday.