This great irony has always existed in hospitals, whether they are in New Jersey or anywhere else: They are at once facilities where people go to get better while at the same time being environments marked by heightened risk factors that can imperil the health of...
Doctor Errors
Focus: getting from doctor errors to full patient disclosure
It is certainly interesting to read one prominent doctor and medical commentator note that "one of the most difficult moments in one's career" relates not to unraveling a complex illness or informing a patient of tragic news, but, rather, to a discussion with another...
In the wake of national meningitis outbreak: a rising human toll
By way of an update, which is perhaps timely given a batch of relevant numbers just reported in the Boston Globe, we seek to keep our New Jersey and other readers abreast of material developments in the nation's unprecedented meningitis outbreak that occurred in...
Opinion: A call for a freeze on electronic health record systems
The recent reference in the medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine to the "Tower of Babel" concerning electronic health records systems (EHRs) is, as most readers might quickly infer, far from being a compliment.The transition from patients' handwritten medical...
Estimates of fatal medical mistakes: Is upward revision required?
The seminal and oft-cited estimate offered more than 20 years ago by the national Institute of Medicine concerning the number of people who die annually in American hospitals owing to medical mistakes was for some time viewed as unrealistic.The IOM report entitled "To...
House committee investigates jump in VA medical malpractice cases
Last year, the Department of Veterans Affairs paid out $91.7 million in medical malpractice claims -- the most in at least 12 years, according to the Government Accountability Office. That represented more than 1,500 malpractice claims against VA providers, which...
Are negligent doctors slipping through the cracks?
Patients have the right to expect that their doctors are qualified professionals who will help them and not cause them harm through medical negligence. To help protect patients, state governments across the country have established medical boards that are in charge of...
IOH team: too many accepted medical practices harmful, unproven
The lead researcher of a team from the National Institutes of Health (IOH) states that the most dire problem existing in the medical industry today owes most prevalently to "when medical practices are instituted in error." Dr. Vinay Prasad says that the way to combat...
Study: Future cancers tied to high rate of CT scans in kids today
A central point that prominently emerges in research that was published recently in the journal JAMA Pediatrics is that X-ray errors and other types of scanning problems can derive from many sources, which makes cancer risks -- especially for young patients --...
Doctor’s view on medical mistakes: greater transparency needed
An experienced infectious-disease physician who often writes articles on medical topics recently addressed the subject of surgical mistakes and other medical errors, noting both a culture of nondisclosure surrounding the admission of error and the need for doctors and...