-
In 1984, a woman received dental implants to replace her temporomandibular joints, connecting the jaw to the skull.
-
Insurance claims against doctors, nurses and other medical professionals have stabilized for the first time in years, according to the seventh annual Aon Hospital Professional Liability and Physician Liability Benchmark Analysis, recently released by the insurance giant based in Chicago.
-
The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations recently issued a Sentinel Event Alert that urges health care organizations to pay special attention to how emergency power systems can fail.
-
Reprocessing medical devices labeled for single use offers substantial savings, but the practice has been controversial since it first started gaining popularity more than 10 years ago.
-
Falls occur in the emergency department (ED) with distressing frequency, but the typical fall prevention strategies that work in other areas of health care may not be so effective in this special setting.
-
Young doctors, long work hours, and inexperience are a bad combination when you're trying to improve patient safety, according to new research that provides a clear reminder of the risks inherent in a medical residency program.
-
In a tragic demonstration that increased vigilance is sometimes not enough to prevent medication errors, the same hospital that promised sweeping changes after the accidental deaths of three premature newborns reports that another error has led to the paralysis of a teenage mother.
-
A woman suffering from severe discomfort in her mouth and throat area presented to the emergency department (ED) for treatment. Over the next two days, doctors passed the patient around as they refused to respond to their on-call duties.
-
Risk managers will reap lessons from the experience of health care providers in the Gulf Coast for years to come, but one of the most apparent lessons from Hurricane Katrina should send you rushing to reassess your organization's disaster plans. What looks good on paper may not work at all in the midst of a major crisis in your community, some hospitals learned, and failing to plan adequately could set your organization up for tremendous liability in the aftermath of a disaster.
-
The New Orleans experience should make risk managers aware that disasters rarely unfold the way you expected them to in all those planning sessions. If your plan for a major fire at your hospital involves moving patients to another facility down the street, what if that facility is out of action too? If your plan calls for evacuating patients to another city, what if all the roads are closed?
