-
Health care facilities see a wide array of different types of people admitted for care, and not all of them will be the type you want to take home for dinner. Convicted sex offenders get sick and need long-term care just like everyone else, and that means you must be ready to respond when they are admitted to your facility.
-
As the evidence mounts that patients and long-term care residents can be threatened by the presence of sex offenders in their facilities, some communities are responding with efforts to protect the vulnerable.
-
Never assume that all sex offenders are the same, cautions Michael Fogel, PsyD, a forensic psychologist at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Doing so will lead you to either overreact to some patients who pose little harm or underreact to those who truly pose a risk to others.
-
Authority figures in health care have the potential to influence whether deviation is normalized, notes John Banja, PhD, assistant director for health sciences and clinical ethics at Emory University in Atlanta.
-
More hospitals are adopting the use of color-coded wristbands for patients in an effort to improve safety by alerting anyone nearby that the person is a fall risk, for instance, or to provide quick recognition that the patient has a penicillin allergy or even a do-not-resuscitate order. But now there are growing concerns that the wristbands can violate the patient's confidentiality by displaying private information to anyone who sees the wristband.
-
The newly launched Health Care Notification Network (HCNN) has delivered the first online drug alerts to U.S. physicians.
-
News: A man was admitted to the hospital complaining of anxiety and being under tremendous pressure at work. The man was seen by an internist and a neurologist, and antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications were administered. After a few days, the man's condition improved, and the results of a brain MRI came back normal. The next morning, the man asked his nurse for a razor so that he could shave. Three hours later, he was found dead, locked in the bathroom, having committed suicide with the razor.
-
A False Claims Act (FCA) settlement totaling $89 million is ringing alarm bells in health care institutions across the country, reminding risk managers that improper billing and coding or even carelessness that gives the impression of fraud can result in a huge monetary loss when all is revealed to the feds.
-
The $89 million settlement by Staten Island University Hospital (SIUH) was prompted when two people one the widow of a cancer patient and the other a doctor who saw improper billing sounded the alarm through lawsuits filed under the False Claims Act (FCA).
-
Dealing with disruptive physicians is no easy task, even if you recognize the importance of preventing their bullying, abusive behavior. Creating a culture in which such interaction is not tolerated is a good step, but you also must be willing to get physicians help when they need it.
