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Risk Management Falls Under Criticism After a Patient is Forcibly Removed

Risk management at a Florida hospital was cited as insufficient in the state investigation following a high publicized incident in which a patient was forcibly removed, and the state rejected the hospital’s corrective action plan.

Improve On-Call ED Coverage by Making it Easier on Specialists

You come to work Monday morning and hear this tale from your emergency department: A patient presented in the ED over the weekend with compartment syndrome and needed a fasciotomy, but no specialist was available. None of the available physicians had done one since medical school, so the physician who drew the short straw studied the procedure on YouTube before proceeding.

Failure to administer diagnostic tests or refer to specialist leads to death, $8.25 million liability

In 2009, a 68-year-old man suffering from arthritis in his knee checked into a hospital for a total knee replacement. Following the surgery, the man complained of confusion and disorientation and became hypoxic and anemic.

Failure to adequately supervise a first-year resident leads to $1.57 million jury award against hospital

In 2011, a man fell 16 feet from a scaffold and landed on a concrete slab. The man was airlifted to a local hospital with a broken left leg, left foot, and left elbow. The man’s wife met him at the hospital, and the two stayed at the hospital while the man was treated. According to court documents, the next day the man began complaining to his wife of increasing pain in his left arm.

Hospital fires two over NFL player’s records

Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami has fired two employees for inappropriately accessing the medical records of an NFL football player and settled a related lawsuit for an undisclosed amount.

Flexible resident duty hour policies safe for patients?

Allowing residents the flexibility to work longer shifts than allowed in the United States and to take less time off between shifts to provide continuity of patient care is not associated with a greater risk to patients of early serious postoperative complications or death, according to study results involving 117 U.S. general surgery residency programs and 151 hospitals.

HIPAA settlement addresses medical device users

Lahey Hospital and Medical Center in Burlington, MA, has agreed to settle potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act with the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights. Lahey will pay $850,000 and will adopt a “robust” corrective action plan to correct deficiencies in its HIPAA compliance program, OCR reports. Lahey is a nonprofit teaching hospital affiliated with Tufts Medical School.

Communication failure cited in 30% of med mal

Thirty percent of all medical malpractice claims involve a communication failure, according to a new report. These claims involve communication breakdowns in which acts, figures, or findings got lost between the individuals who had that information and those who needed it, across the spectrum of healthcare services and settings.

$750K settlement shows need for organizationwide risk analysis

The University of Washington Medicine in Seattle has agreed to settle charges that it potentially violated the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act Security Rule by failing to implement policies and procedures to prevent, detect, contain, and correct security violations.

Safety culture critical to better surgical results

To achieve better results for surgical patients, hospitals tend to focus on technical issues such as surgeons’ skills and operating room equipment. However, a non-technical factor, the so-called “safety culture,” might be equally important in delivering high-quality patient care, a team of investigators report in a study published online in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons in advance of print publication.