Healthcare Risk Management 2005-08-01

In preventing falls, children are no less deserving of protection than the elderly

Pediatric falls require different strategies, not same old thing Falls among elderly patients are high on the priority list for any risk manager, but what about your patients on the other end of the spectrum? Are you doing all you can to prevent falls among your youngest patients?

Reducing falls in pediatric patients means more staff

Childrens Memorial Medical Center in Chicago and South Nassau Communities Hospital in Oceanside, NY, have instituted a number of strategies to reduce falls among its young patients.

Update your e-mail policy now to keep up with usage

(Editors note: This is the second in a series of articles about the risks of using e-mail in health care. Next months issue will include the third in this series.) Chances are good that you have a policy on the proper use of e-mail within your organization and when communicating with patients, but it probably is time for an update to keep pace with rapid advances in technology and the way people use e-mail.

Unclean instruments may have been used in NC

Two hospitals run by Duke University Health System in North Carolina were cited in a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) report for mistakenly washing surgical instruments in used hydraulic fluid instead of detergent and failed to notice the mix-up for weeks.

DOJ ruling on HIPAA increases risk to employer

A new ruling by the Department of Justice (DOJ) sharply limits the governments ability to prosecute people for criminal violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), but that may lead prosecutors to hold your organization responsible for those violations instead.

Retained objects now considered reviewable

Foreign objects retained after surgery now are considered sentinel events.

Patient handoff must be more than a formality

Patient handoff is a high-risk time that many health care workers dont handle as well as they should, cautions Meghan Dierks, MD, MS, a faculty member at Harvard Medical School and a member of the Clinical Decision Making Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both in Cambridge.

Handoff information should cover past, future

Meghan Dierks, MD, MS, a faculty member at Harvard Medical School and a member of the Clinical Decision Making Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both in Cambridge, offers an outline of what information should be exchanged in an ideal patient handoff.

Hospitals sharply reduce infections, related costs

Any effort to reduce surgical infections and their associated costs may run into a formidable hurdle: Operating room teams tend to assume theyre using best practices when theyre actually not.

Failure to provide backup power results in death and a $450,000 Massachusetts settlement

By Jan J. Gorrie, Esq. Buchanan Ingersoll PC Tampa, FL

Healthcare Risk Management – August 1, 2005

August 1, 2005