Industry News
Experts Question Medicare Effort to Rate Hospitals Patient Safety Records
By | On Feb 13, 2012 | CommentsFrom Kaiser Health News
Medicare’s first public effort to identify hospitals with patient safety problems has pinpointed many prestigious teaching institutions around the nation, raising concerns about quality at these places but also bolstering objections that the government’s measurements are skewed. Read the full text article >>.
Patient-Centered Care Model Demands Better Physician-Patient Communication
By | On Feb 03, 2012 | CommentsFrom Journal of the American Medical Association
Physicians need excellent communication skills and appropriate tools for facilitating communication to more effectively incorporate patient preferences into care. Read the full text article >>
Report Finds Most Errors at Hospitals Go Unreported
By | On Jan 06, 2012 | CommentsThe New York Times, January 6, 2012.
WASHINGTON — Hospital employees recognize and report only one out of seven errors, accidents and other events that harm Medicare patients while they are hospitalized, federal investigators say in a new report.
Yet even after hospitals investigate preventable injuries and infections that have been reported, they rarely change their practices to prevent repetition of the “adverse events,” according to the study, from Daniel R. Levinson, inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Click to read the full article.
Medical tests are pointless when results don’t reach the doctor or patient
By | On Nov 28, 2011 | CommentsThe Washington Post, November 28, 2011
“Health reform and payment reform are moving us toward integrating care to a degree that we don’t do right now,” says Diane Pinakiewicz, president of the National Patient Safety Foundation , a Boston-based consumer group. More…
Doctors Could Learn Something about Medical Handoffs from the Navy
By | On Apr 18, 2011 | CommentsLos Angeles Times, April 18, 2011
Medical handoffs—a change of care from one doctor to another—create a high potential for miscommunication and error which can be harmful, even deadly. For techniques to improve these handoffs and keep patients safer, physicians may have to look outside of the healthcare field. Read More→
Health Care’s Infectious Losses
By | On Jul 06, 2009 | CommentsNew York Times Op-Ed | July 6, 2009
By Paul O’Neill
Secretary of the Treasury 2001-02, Former Chairman and CEO of Alcoa, LLI Member
With a few small steps, we would no longer have the suffering and death associated with infections acquired in hospitals and we would save tens of billions of dollars every year.
