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While The Joint Commission is asking health care facilities to use computerized physician order entry and bar coding technology as an adjunct to arm themselves in managing high-risk medications including anticoagulants, a recent study highlights the errors implicit in this kind of information technology support.
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In September, the American Hospital Association issued a quality advisory on implementing standardized colors for patient alert wristbands, citing a near miss when a nurse mistakenly placed a wrong-colored bracelet on a patient, confusing the color codes of the two hospitals for which she worked.
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A story that ran in the Sept. 12 issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer "Hospitals' mistakes are going unreported" might have shocked readers with its description of unreported errors in New Jersey and Pennsylvania despite the states' mandatory reporting requirements.
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Just as in certain consumer-driven businesses, the mantra was always "the customer is always right," in health care, the mantra at least the one attributed to physician attitudes and principles historically has been "the patients' needs come first."
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In addition to physician ethics, the pay-for-performance concept also has been instituted by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) related to its statement that its policy will be to no longer pay for any on a list of so-called "never" events that occur at hospitals. The policy became effective Oct. 1.
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More and more questionable ties between physicians and drug companies are being uncovered in an investigation into such financial relationships conducted by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA).
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Bridges to Excellence (BTE) CEO Francois de Brantes doesn't mince words when asked if he thinks there is an ethical conflict between the payment model of pay-for-performance essentially giving physicians additional payments for good performance based on certain quality measures and ethical decision-making by physicians.
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Decision making in health care ethics consultation cases often involves difficult, complex issues and mediating differences of opinion.
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When a judge recently ordered a pharmaceutical company to provide an investigational drug to a teenage boy who had not met the enrollment criteria for a phase II trial, the IRB world took note.
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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.
