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News: An elderly man was transferred to a nursing home following a brief stay at another facility. Although the man was currently taking more than 20 medications, the second page of the two-page prescription order sheet somehow was misplaced during the transfer. The second nursing home did not realize the mistake and accordingly failed to give the patient all of his necessary medications. The man subsequently experienced acute renal failure and died.
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The Equal Employment Opportunity Commis-sion (EEOC) has issued interpretive guidelines to help health care employers understand their obligations under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and the main message is that hospitals and other health care providers must proceed carefully when dealing with disabled employees.
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Many health care providers are considering adopting the idea of a hotline that patients and family members can call when they think their concerns are being taken lightly by their immediate caregivers, but some risk managers might wonder if the phone will be ringing off the hook with trivial complaints and misunderstandings.
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All patients treated in the Community Health Network's hospitals in Indiana are given a brochure that describes the Call FIRST (Family Initiated Rapid Screening Team) that serves as a safety net when patients or family members think their concerns are not being addressed. These are some excerpts from the brochure:
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With its best-selling antipsychotic drug Zyprexa the target of thousands of legal claims, Eli Lilly and Co., based in Indianapolis, is trying to reassure psychiatrists they face little malpractice risk for prescribing such drugs.
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The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in Rockville, MD, recently released 17 new toolkits to help health care providers and patients prevent medical errors.
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News: A nursing home resident with a history of difficulty in swallowing choked to death while eating a piece of brisket. Although staff attempted to perform the Heimlich maneuver and CPR on her, the woman died.
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Hospice managers have long suspected that their care both improves quality and saves payers money. Now there's a major research study of Medicare end-of-life patients that demonstrates that hospice care saves money for most end-of-life patients.
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Some hospices pay too little attention to how they complete Medicare cost reports. The result? Bad data at a time when good information is critically needed, as the industry undergoes regulatory scrutiny, one expert says.
