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Citing serious concerns about needle safety at Connecticuts largest hospital, a union representing hospital service workers has filed a formal complaint with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in Washington, DC.
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The risk of giving advice to patients by phone should be well known to risk managers, and most have educated staff about what not to say to patients with questions. Add in the automated answering systems that urge patients to call 911 for emergencies, and you should be well covered in this area, right? Not necessarily.
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A closely watched case in Connecticut has some observers worried that health care providers will be discouraged from reporting information about physicians to state boards, other monitoring groups, and even a hospitals internal peer review system.
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Liability waivers are best used for voluntary activities or when patients refuse your clinicians advice, says Jeffrey Driver, JD, MBA, chief risk officer with Stanford (CA) University Medical Center and president of the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management in Chicago. He suggests these categories.
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Youre fed up with being dragged into every lawsuit that has even the slightest connection to your institution, so you daydream about having patients just sign a waiver up front promising to never sue you for anything. Nice fantasy, but those things dont really hold up in court, do they?
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Patient safety is on everyones minds these days, but how do you know how well your organization already is doing on this topic? One way is a tool offered by the Agency for Health-care Research and Quality (AHRQ), an arm of the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, DC.
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If the flu season hits your community hard, will your health care staff suffer because they didnt get enough flu shots? Quite possibly. But there is something risk managers can do.
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When risk managers first heard that there wouldnt be enough flu vaccine from the two manufacturers still providing it, many probably reacted with the same thought: Thats what you get when money-hungry trial lawyers run health care companies out of business. But is that really the cause of the flu vaccine shortage?
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Health care providers in Texas have agreed to pay $12.5 million to settle a lawsuit stemming from the theft of an unattended ambulance, which was then involved in an accident that killed a father and seriously injured the rest of his family. The plaintiffs attorney says the settlement underscores the need for hospitals to secure ambulances and other vehicles.
