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With the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) expanding the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act's (HIPAA) patient health information privacy and security protections beyond what most already considered a compliance nightmare, some legal and privacy experts are saying the expansion may have taken compliance from merely difficult to nearly impossible to achieve.
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Patients and air ambulance crews are dying at an alarming rate because the air ambulance helicopter industry has little oversight and poor organization, according to a recent safety review.
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Most hospitals still have not implemented standards proven to improve quality and save lives, even though it has been 10 years since the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) landmark report on the failure of U.S. hospitals to adequately protect patient safety. That is the conclusion of the 2008 Leapfrog Hospital Survey, which shows that only 7% of hospitals fully meet Leapfrog medication error prevention standards, and low percentages of hospitals are fully meeting mortality standards.
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A woman who suffered from long-standing depression presented to the hospital seeking an adjustment of her antidepressant medication. During hospitalization, she suffered seizures. The hospital was unable to determine the etiology of the seizures and transferred the woman to another hospital in the area. Upon transfer, she underwent an examination and laboratory testing.
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A man slipped and fell while getting out of his hospital bed, causing him to suffer a fractured hip and leg. The man and his wife sued the hospital for negligence, claiming that he had not been fitted with "gripper socks" and that nurses had not responded after the man had attempted to call them with the call light.
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Case management outcomes can be a powerful tool for identifying the need for operational changes or process improvements throughout your hospital, as well as demonstrating the value of case management.
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A pre-admission screening and educational program for patients having elective surgery has helped slash readmissions among patients treated at Geisinger Health System from nearly 20% a year ago to about 10% today.
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A few years ago, Christus Santa Rosa Hospital in San Antonio was $80 million in the red and was compliant with medical necessity and appropriateness of care criteria only 62% of the time, according to audits by the hospital's quality improvement organization (QIO).
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Several EDs across the country have initiated policies to encourage patients who don't face "true" emergencies to seek care elsewhere in the community and to find "medical homes," but none have been met with the outrage that descended upon the University of Chicago Medical Center recently.
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Hospitals and EDs that institute policies similar to the recent approach instituted at the University of Chicago Medical Center would do well to consider that they may be in violation of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), warns Michael Frank, MD, JD, FACEP, FCLM, general counsel and director of risk management for Emergency Medicine Physicians (EMP) Management Group in Canton, OH.
