-
A rural hospital contacts an air medical service (AMS) provider to transfer by helicopter a patient with blunt trauma. The distance between the sending and receiving facility is 75 miles. The "Life Flight" helicopter crew receives the request at 00:00, and departs their base at 00:20. They abort the flight at 00:40 hours, 10 miles from the sending facility, because the cloud ceiling drops to 700 feet, 300 feet below the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) minimum for night flight by helicopters. The sending facility then calls another AMS provider and requests that the patient be transported to the same receiving facility.
-
The case of Moses v. Providence Hospital and Medical Centers, Inc. could be the tipping point that finally puts to rest the oft-repeated mantra of the civil courts that "EMTALA is not a federal malpractice law."
-
In a testicular torsion case, consistent and clear documentation by both ED nurses and physicians of the complaint, the onset of the problem and the examination of the patient placed the patient outside the timeframe where any medical intervention would have lead to a different result.
-
-
Be sure to include home care services in any pandemic response plans. Fortunately, more than half (53%) of the nation's home medical equipment and service providers have formal plans to respond to a pandemic flu, and another 23% have stockpiled N95 masks or other supplies related to a flu pandemic, according to a survey of 1,500 providers conducted at the beginning of the most recent flu scare.
-
The nation's most recent scare with the H1N1 flu virus showed both the good and the bad of health care providers' preparations for a serious pandemic, and the assessments are largely positive.
-
The reporting of critical test results and lab values is the kind of process that makes a risk manager nervous if you think about it too much. How do you really know if your organization is reporting test results promptly, efficiently, and effectively, every single time?
-
After an instance of wrong-site surgery that still defies explanation, officials at Rhode Island Hospital in Providence agreed to conduct an extensive examination of safety procedures in the surgery department.
-
Health care-associated infections (HAIs) are clearly on the radar of Kathleen Sebelius, the new Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). She recently called for action to prevent HAIs in praising two new HHS reports on the quality of health care in America.
-
News: A woman suffered cardiac arrest while at home. Hospital paramedics arrived, but attempts to resuscitate her with a Lifepak 11 monitor and defibrillator failed. Forty minutes later, the woman was pronounced dead. The decedent's estate sued the hospital and was awarded $5.3 million in damages.
