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Medicare Fines Hundreds Of Hospitals For Patient Safety Violations: Did Your Hospital Make The List?
No one expects that getting treatment for a medical problem could actually worsen your health-and they shouldn't! No one should ever have to worry that seeing a doctor could put their health at risk. Sadly, however, the Centers for Disease Control estimate that one out of every 25 patients being cared for in a hospital has at least one healthcare-associated infection.
This alarming statistic is one of the reasons the Affordable Care Act required that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) implement a program to increase patient safety. This CMS program, in addition to setting Medicare payment standards for patients, also establishes a rule specifically targeted to reduce healthcare-associated conditions (HAC).
The HAC Reduction Program states that if a hospital is found to have high rates of HAC incidents it will be financially penalized in terms of the Medicare payments it will receive. This program went into effect on October 1, 2014, and the CMS has already penalized over 700 hospitals.
A Spinal Cord Injury Costs WHAT? Time To Contact A Fairfax Spinal Cord Injury Attorney.
You are still trying to comprehend what the doctor said. You understand that you have suffered a spinal cord injury and you understand your prognosis. What you can't understand is what your life is going to be like now. As your doctors, therapists, friends and relatives discuss your new life with you, you can't help but think of the costs. How are you going to pay for the services that you need? What will you do without a regular income? What is all of this going to cost and how will you pay your bills?
The Financial Costs of Spinal Cord Injuries
The exact cost of a spinal cord injury depends on the individual injury. You can get an idea of what a spinal cord injury may cost by looking at statistics compiled by The University of Alabama National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and reported by the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation. Specifically, you should know that:
Why Physicians Rarely Apologize For Medical Malpractice Errors
When you go to a hospital for treatment, you expect that the staff will be respectful, professional and knowledgeable. You hope that your ailment will be easily diagnosed and the proper treatment will be administered so you can get back to feeling like yourself. Unfortunately, hospital visits aren't always straightforward, doctors aren't always truthful, and sometimes you may leave feeling worse than when you arrived.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, more than 50,000 cases of medical malpractice are reported every year in the United States, while thousands more go unreported. A 2007 study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine stated that while on surveys 95% of physicians say they would disclose an error, only 41% of physicians actually do acknowledge minor errors and only 5% confess major mistakes.
The National Institute of Health recognizes that many physicians express the desire to apologize to patients when an error has occurred. However, unless specifically questioned or sued, the majority of physicians tend to keep mistakes to themselves for the following reasons:
How Do You Know Your Private Medical Records Are Really Private?
Have you ever overheard a doctor or nurse talking about a patient in a public area such as an elevator or hospital cafeteria? Has a nurse ever tried to excuse her tardiness by telling you about the patient she saw before getting to you? How often have you wondered about whether your doctor or nurse talks about you in public? Even worse, now that Inova is using the online record-keeping system MyChart, are you worried about the security of your medical records? Even though mistakes can still be made, there are government policies in place to help ensure your patient privacy rights.
Legality of Medical Record Privacy
The proper care and protection of patient rights is a huge concern for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The agency wants to ensure that citizens are getting proper care and are being treated respectfully while getting that care. In order to ensure these rights, HHS has developed policies to monitor hospitals' actions and protect the rights of their patients.
Medical Negligence Includes Failing To Restart An Anticoagulant After Surgery
Anticoagulation medicines are given to patients whose blood clots too quickly. When this occurs, blood clots can form in the wrong places, and cause life-threatening injuries such as a stroke or pulmonary embolism. Anticoagulation medicines are designed to thin the blood, making the formation of blood clots within the heart, arterial system and venous system less likely.
There are numerous conditions for which anticoagulation medicines are given. They include patients who have had heart valve replacements; patients who have heart rhythm disorders such as atrial fibrillation; patients who have received a pacemaker; and patients who have blood clotting disorders such as Factor V Leiden. Anticoagulation medications are also given to patients following certain types of surgeries in an effort to protect patients from the formation of blood clots due to patient inactivity during the recuperative period.
There are any different types of anticoagulation medicines. They include warfarin (also known by its brand name, Coumadin), Eliquis, Plavix, Lovenox, Heparin, Xarelto. Aspirin also acts as a blood thinner. Each medication works slightly different, and is administered in different ways..
The Factors Behind Anesthesia Dosage Errors
Anesthesia is used in many ways during medical procedures. From numbing a specific area to relaxing a patient to inducing complete unconsciousness, anesthesiologists must be careful about how it is administered. When things go wrong with anesthesia, it is usually because of a dosage error.
Medication dosage errors are more common than many people realize. Unfortunately, all people-even doctors-can make mistakes. Errors made with anesthesia medications are often knowledge-based errors due to a poor interpretation of information or a slip up on the part of the anesthesiologist. Some examples of anesthesia dosage errors include:
- Administration mistakes. There are several stages between ordering a drug and delivering it to a patient, and mistakes can occur during any of the following steps: transcription, preparation, dispersion, and administration. According to the National Institutes of Health, most medication errors take place during the administration stage.
Brain Injuries Aren’t Always Diagnosed In The ER
People don't want to go to a hospital emergency room (ER), but when they do, they expect an accurate diagnosis. Once they've been seen by a doctor, patients expect to have answers and an understanding of their illness or injury. However, sometimes the medical personnel in the ER don't provide a correct diagnosis.
While emergency room doctors are skilled and want to help treat patients, they have been known to overlook signs and symptoms and fail to diagnose conditions such as brain injuries. In addition, some doctors may ignore or dismiss the signs of a brain injury assuming the incident or event wasn't severe enough to cause such serious damage. For example, sometimes a person is taken to the ER after a fall and treated for the bump on their head and sent home. Some doctors fail to conduct diagnostic tests such as an MRI or a CT scan to determine the extent of the head injury. A subdural hematoma may have been missed, even though the patient may have complained of a bad headache, sharp forehead pain, and confusion.
Protecting Head Injury Rights For Those Who Can’t Speak For Themselves
Brain injuries and trauma have varying degrees of severity that can range from minor concussions to devastating brain damage. When the trauma is severe, it's quite common for communication problems to develop. These problems impair the victim's brain's ability to communicate with his body, thus leaving him unable to communicate with the world. When someone can't communicate with the world, it is extremely difficult to be sure his legal rights are being upheld.
Brain Injury Locations That Cause Communication Problems
- Frontal Lobe: This area affects planning, organizing, emotional and behavioral control, personality, problem solving, attention, social skills, conscious movement, and flexible thinking
- Parietal Lobe: This area affects perception, spatial awareness, and spelling
- Temporal Lobe: This area affects memory, recognition, language, and emotions
- Broca's Area: This area affects language expression
- Wernicke's area: This part of the brain helps handle understanding and processing language
Cell Phone Rules And Regulations On Virginia Roads
Is your phone permanently attached to your hand? Can you not go 30 minutes without checking it for messages and status updates? Do you have to respond to a text immediately after hearing the "ding?" Does this need follow you when you're behind the wheel?
If you answered "Yes" to any of these questions, you may have a bigger problem than you realize.
These days, almost everyone from the age of eight to eighty has a cell phone. Tweeting, texting, "liking," and posting have become almost involuntary acts. However, this increase in electronic communication has also drastically decreased users' levels of concentration.
Although you may believe that the occasional glance at your phone or 10 second pause to respond to a text isn't that big a deal, you're dangerously wrong. According to the Department of Transportation's official distracted driving website, d!straction.gov, the average amount of time your eyes are off the road while merely checking a text is five seconds. This five seconds can be equivalent to driving the length of a football field blindfolded. How confident are you that you could safely drive 100 yards without looking at the road (make sure you take into account that you're surrounded by pedestrians and other blindfolded drivers). Do you still think the occasional glance is safe?
Why Do Doctors Have Trouble Detecting Brain Injuries In Children?
Children are injured every day doing normal activities-playing their favorite sports, climbing on a play structure at the park, and skateboarding or rollerblading. While injuries can range in severity, one of the most serious for children is a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and can often be missed by doctors.
Reasons That Brain Injuries Go Undetected in Children
The following are three main reasons doctors have trouble detecting brain injuries in children or miss them all together:
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