A Salisbury cardiologist accused of placing unneeded coronary stents in hundreds of patients has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Baltimore on health care fraud charges alleging he put patients' lives at risk unnecessarily while billing private and public insurers millions of dollars.
Two Texas nurses were fired after anonymously reporting a doctor for improper medical treatment. The nurses were acquitted by a jury and the doctor will be tried for numerous violations found by the state medical board.
A new online map provides information on doctors you might not want to trust.
Hear from a journalist about how difficult it is to find information about a serious medical error. No matter what source you turn to, you are left with few answers.
Not all physicians are well-qualified to practice medicine. And doctors who keep mum about their colleagues' incompetence have their own issues.
This is why there has to be reform of State Medical Boards - Doctor gets "slight slap on the wrist" for leaving operating room during surgery.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists released guidelines that state it is safe to have a vaginal delivery after a previous delivery by cesarean delivery.
"Diagnosing the earliest stage of breast cancer can be surprisingly difficult, prone to both outright error and case-by-case disagreement over whether a cluster of cells is benign or malignant, according to an examination of breast cancer cases by The New York Times."
"More than a third of docs don't think they're responsible for reporting those who aren't fit to practice, according to the results just published in JAMA. And only 69 percent of the docs who knew about an impaired or incompetent colleague reported them."
"California's registered nursing board has discovered that some 3,500 of its nurses have been punished for misconduct by other states — hundreds even had their licenses revoked — while maintaining clean licenses in the state. As many as 2,000 of these nurses now will face discipline in California, officials estimate. That's more registered nurses than the state has sanctioned in the last four years combined."
Is the "July Effect" a myth. A study shows that deaths due to medication errors spike in July at teaching hospitals where new residents are just starting their residency. Medical records from 1979-2006 were analyzed.
New Colorado law shines the light on medical professionals' backgrounds.
Patient advocate Patty Skolnik successfully advocated for a new law that expands Colorado's physician database to include more health care providers, making it easier for the public to access background information about their health care provider.
"Hospitals either aren't disciplining doctors who have had problems, or are finding ways to avoid federal reporting rules."
A doctor is accused of placing 500 unnecessary stents in patients.
"A Texas Tribune review of the 383 disciplinary actions taken by the nursing board between June and September of 2009 found about a third of the cases involved substance abuse."
"Texas nurses with substance abuse problems — including showing up to work drunk or high, stealing narcotics meant for patients, and forging doctor signatures on prescriptions for pain-killers — are often not punished for their acts for months or even years and continue to practice in the meantime, according to a Texas Tribune review of state nursing disciplinary records."
The Empowered Patient Project has created a patient oriented survey on adverse medical events. Aggregate information from the surveys will be posted on their website.
AARP: Older Adults Still the Most Affected by Dangerous Medical Errors
Public Citizen’s 2010 annual ranking of state medical boards shows that most states, including one of the largest, are not living up to their obligations to protect patients from doctors who are practicing substandard medicine, according to the report released today.
A 23 month old died from an overdose of blood thinner while in the hospital to be treated for an infection.
Checklists that spell out exactly how to care for patients with common conditions have dramatically reduced hospital deaths, say doctors.
"There's no national tally of physicians who abuse their patients, but some say better reporting by hospitals and doctors and state medical boards would help. There is a database, which was established in 1986, but it also includes malpractice decisions and the information is not available to the public."
Patient Safety Advocates Launch Campaign to Reduce Resident Physician Fatigue, Boost Patient Safety
Merrill Goozner points out another little-noticed provision in the bill: "Drug and device companies will soon have to report payments to physicians in a national database, thanks to a little noted section of the health care reform bill called the Physician Payments Sunshine Act."
According to a study published this month in the journal Medical Care hospital occupancy, weekend admissions, nurse staffing and the seasonal flu are major factors that increase the risk of dying in a hospital.
Southern NH Medical Center Nurse Sentenced for stealing narcotics & replacing them with saline
Wentworth Douglas Hospital Faces Lawsuit over Smearing Lab Director
The following films from Transparent Learning are the first in a series of educational stories that feature patient safety advocates including Helen Haskell, Rosemary Gibson and Dr. Lucian Leape.
Wentworth Douglas Hospital's Laboratory on probation
Leading patient safey advocate Dr. Lucian Leape released report. He makes a strong statement on public reporting: "Transparency is an idea whose time has come and both hospitals and the public will be better off because of it." His statement and report are online now.
This survey was created for patients who have experienced medical harm, their loved ones and their advocates. This survey was created by the Empowered Patient Coalition and we have jointly published this survey on our websites. This survey is designed to answer questions that are important to patients. This is a way for patients to report their experience as they have lived it, and to know that their report will be counted.The Empowered Patient Coalition will be entering the events annonymously on a map so you can see your error and others in your state by clciking on the map.
How You Can Investigate Your State’s Oversight of Its Nurses and Other Licensed Professionals- Provided by ProPublica reporters Charles Ornstein and Tracey Weber.
ProPublica reporters Charles Ornstein and Tracey Weber have put together a very useful tool for tracking nurses performance. The chart shows, "which states allow you to verify a nurse’s license for free online, which provide Web access to disciplinary documents, and which participate in a publicly available national database. "
Patty Skolnik, Founder of Citizens for Patient Safety, makes CNN's "Intriguing people" feature. Patty was a speaker on CU's consumer panel on medical harm at our "To Err Is Human, To Delay Is Deadly" forum in DC. She is a lead advocate in Colorado and nationally on patient safety and doctor accountability issues.
For some medical conditions, the cost of care does not directly correlate to the quality of care according to a study in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
New Hampshire ranks fourth in the nation for deadly methadone overdoses, and health professionals and law enforcement are battling to keep it and other prescription drugs out of the wrong hands.
A federal database of disciplinary actions taken against health professionals is missing numerous serious disciplinary records.
A new study, which followed patients with latent TB at 32 U.S. and Canadian medical clinics, found that 22 of 53 healthcare workers who were offered treatment declined to take it.
Responding to a continuing push from lawmakers to reveal how much the pharmaceutical industry is influencing America's doctors, two more major drug makers have made public their payments to physicians, but an industry expert says the data are of limited value.
A new campaign aimed at reducing medical errors is targeting the grueling schedules required of medical residents (doctors-in-training) and interns who often work shifts up to 30 hours at a time.
Activists are urging the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), which controls medical residency training programs, to limit the amount of time residents go without sleep to 16 hours and to increase supervision of the residents. This would bring prevailing rules in line with recommendations outlined in a 2008 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report on resident duty hours.
The owner of two research hospitals affiliated with the Harvard Medical School has imposed restrictions on outside pay for two dozen senior officials who also sit on the boards of pharmaceutical or biotechnology companies. Doctors who sit on Pharma boards can make hundreds of thousands extra pay a year.
Medically Injured Trauma Support Services (MITSS) honors Patty Skolnik for her work on patients safety through the organization she founded- Colorado Citizens for Accountability.
An LA Times/ProPublica investigation on nurses who were disciplined for medical errors in one state who hold nursing licenses and may continue to practice (and harm patients) in other states. Using public databases and state disciplinary reports, reporters found hundreds of cases in which registered nurses held clear licenses in some states after they'd been sanctioned in others, often for serious misdeeds. In California alone, a months-long review of its 350,000 active nurses found at least 177 whose licenses had been revoked, surrendered, suspended or denied elsewhere.
A proposed amendment to the Senate health care bill would prohibit drug companies from mining pharmacy records in order to craft their marketing to a doctor's prescribing history.
Leapfrog sites only five of U.S. News' 21 best hospitals. View Leapfrogs press release on the top hospitals list.
Pennsylvania's Geisnger Health Systems, a private, nonprofit, provides excellent care at lower costs. "Medical authorities inside and outside Geisinger credit the system's performance to three factors: its salary-based compensation for physicians; an electronic medical records system that reduces the likelihood of treatment duplication by integrating the services of doctors, nurses and administrators; and best-practice protocols that require doctors to follow accepted standards for certain kinds of treatment.
If you will need any form of difficult medical testing or treatment, you will need to choose your doctor wisely. You'll want to do some research about the doctor to be sure his credentials, experience and abilities meet your needs, and just as important, be sure he has not built a track record of disciplinary problems or malpractice. Here is a guide for finding a doctor's malpractice or disciplinary information that may help protect you and your family.
Firms that supply temporary nurses to the nation's hospitals are taking perilous shortcuts in their screening and supervision, sometimes putting seriously ill patients in the hands of incompetent or impaired caregivers.
James Woods, his mother and the hospital president announced the withdrawal of the lawsuit and a new joint effort by the hospital and the family to improve patient care.
Consumers Union Safe Patient Project Director Lisa McGiffert comments on wrong site surgery.
A new documentary film, "Money-Driven Medicine", tackles the economic underpinnings of an American healthcare system that kills four times as many people through medical error and preventable infections as die in highway accident. Consumers Union has encouraged activists to view this film and take action to make our health care system safer.
“Money-Driven Medicine” examines the medical industrial complex, and what’s wrong with our healthcare system. Watch the movie for free here until November 10 and sign our petition for reform.
Seven years ago, after a scathing series of stories in The Dallas Morning News, the Texas Medical Board promised to crack down on bad doctors. Patient endangerment would be dealt with severely. And sexual misconduct, one official said, would become "intolerable." It hasn't turned out that way.
Broward General Medical Center patients received reused IV bags and have tested positive for some infectious diseases.
Many MRI patients are injected with a GE dye to enhance images. If they have weak kidneys, they might develop a rare and sometimes fatal disease.
The Dallas Morning News investigates the many holes in the Texas Medical Board review process over the past seven years, leaving patients at risk.
Article about "no patient left behind" -- a simple report card system to give patients a heads-up about their doctors' credentials and safety record, something almost impossible to get now.
Josie King, an 18 month old went to the hospital for burns from hot bath water and later died in the hospital from dehydration and medical error.
"The Derrick newspaper in nearby Oil City reported yesterday that "a failure to follow equipment sterilization guidelines" at the hospital resulted in "the notification of more than 100 surgical patients. "
Eli Lilly & Co. paid doctors in South Carolina for participating in a speakers’ program in exchange for prescribing the antipsychotic Zyprexa.
Nancy Metcalf, Consumer Reports said: "We surveyed more than 700 nurses nationwide who work in operating rooms, emergency rooms, critical care units and other areas of the hospital."
A dozen New Jersey hospitals are paying doctors as an incentive to save the hospitals money.
South Carolina licensing boards disciplined 170 doctors and nurses for drug problems in the past year, records show, with addiction running higher among health-care professionals than the general population, according to the director of a program that treats medical workers.
Dead by mistake was researched and written by a team of journalists from across Hearst newspapers and television stations. Hearst describes medical errors as "a critical and neglected health care issue." Consumers Union's Safe Patient Project published a report on medical harm, "To Err is Human, To Delay is Deadly" in May 2009.
"We don't have a Consumer Reports for doctors and hospitals -- at least not yet."
The report, "Back to Basics," analyzed the results of scientific studies of treatment protocols for chronically recurring, avoidable medical errors.
There's a movement to make hard numbers the basis for rankings among hospitals, instead of reputation or word-of-mouth.
The Texas Medical Board provides a complete list of disciplined doctors this quarter.
Beth Nash, an internist employed by Consumer Reports, advises that patients dump a doctor who demands a privacy waiver. "While we have all had bad days," she wrote on the group's health blog, "I find it hard to believe that a doctor with multiple negative reviews has just been unlucky enough to be judged on those occasional bad days."
A new organization of doctors - several from Boston - want to roll back policies curbing interactions between doctors and drug company representatives, saying restrictive rules ultimately will hurt the patients they’re designed to protect.
To quell criticism, some doctors require patients to sign "gag orders."
In the prime of life, rendered a quadriplegic
A disabled young girl starts to question why
The Flint Journal investigates misconduct in the health profession -- from drug abuse to fraud to incompetence and negligence -- that spilled over on the job, causing Michigan regulators to restrict or suspend their licenses from 2006 to 2008.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger replaced most members of the state Board of Registered Nursing on Monday, prompted by reports of problem practitioners continuing to work for years as cases against them drag on, endangering patients.
The board charged with overseeing California's 350,000 registered nurses often takes years to act on complaints of egregious misconduct, leaving nurses accused of wrongdoing free to practice without restrictions, an investigation by The Times and the nonprofit news organization ProPublica found.
Federal officials Thursday warned that about 5,700 surgery patients, including 1,000 at a Colorado Springs surgery center, are at risk of having been infected by an operating room technician with hepatitis C.
Public Citizen's report on ineffective hospital peer review (and under-reporting bad doctors to the National Practitioner Data Bank) made ABC World News on Sunday evening, June 21st. Doctors who perform medical errors are not always reported, and hospitals are not penalized for failing to report bad doctors.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is about to begin a project called “open notes’’ in which about 100 doc tors at the hospital and two other sites will allow 25,000 to 35,000 patients to read their physicians’ notes for a year as part of their online medical record.
Colorado news clip on the Michael Skolnik Medical Transparency Act, a law which went into effect on May 31. The law required a website with information about a doctor’s medical license, criminal background and malpractice settlements, and disciplinary actions against that doctor in any of the 50 states.
An online database on every doctor in Colorado went live Sunday on the homepage of the Department of Regulatory Agencies, www.dora.state.co.us, writes Durango Herald News. The database includes information about doctors' education, malpractice lawsuits, criminal record and disciplinary actions, such as a loss of hospital privileges or drug-prescribing privileges. The state assembled the database after a 2007 law known as the Michael Skolnik Medical Transparency Act. This bill requires the Board of Medical Examiners post important information on their website about all physicians in Colorado.
An online database on every doctor in Colorado went live Sunday on the homepage of the Department of Regulatory Agencies, www.dora.state.co.us. The database includes information about doctors' education, malpractice lawsuits, criminal record and disciplinary actions, such as a loss of hospital privileges or drug-prescribing privileges.
On May 31, all Colorado physicians must be in compliance with a recent state law, the Michael Skolnik Medical Transparency Act, which requires them to publicly report certain business dealings, malpractice actions, disciplinary matters and crimes to practice medicine here.
Study Finds That Few Hospitals Report When Doctors Are Harmful to Patients
On May 31, all Colorado physicians must be in compliance with a recent state law, the Michael Skolnik Medical Transparency Act, that requires them to publicly report certain business dealings, malpractice actions, disciplinary matters and crimes in order to practice medicine here.
Consumers Union Assesses Lack of Progress Ten Years After Institute of Medicine Found Up To 98,000 Die From Preventable Errors
The Consumers Union report said lawmakers largely have failed to enact patient safety reforms recommended by a 1999 report by the Institute of Medicine that found that medical errors cost the U.S. as much as 29 billion U.S. dollars a year.
Despite a landmark report a decade ago detailing the deadly nature of the U.S. health care system, a consumer group finds that little has been done to prevent errors that cost the nation $17 billion to $29 billion and kill as many as 100,000 patients annually.
Report Shows 10-Year Effort to Curb Medical Errors Yields Few Results
Despite a decade of promises, little has been done to fix the problem of preventable medical errors that kill nearly 98,000 people in the United States each year, a consumer group said on Tuesday.
A bill passed by the Vermont House and Senate will close the loopholes in the state's existing gift disclosure law by requiring full disclosure of allowable gifts to physicians, health care organizations, non-profit groups and state-funded academic institutions.
A new report from the Institute of Medicine proposes that both legislation and "voluntary measures" are necessary to improve disclosure of financial ties between the medical community and industry. The report comes amid increasing debate about appropriate disclosure of conflicts of interest (COI) in medicine and research.
Electronic records might make medicine safer and cheaper. But it might just digitize the worst flaws of today's system, where errors are rampant and basic recommended treatments often fall through the cracks.
Virginia shuffles addicted professionals through a five-year monitoring plan called the Health Practitioners’ Intervention Program. It’s a secretive program meant to keep participants sober and in the health care business
Michael Skolnik died from poor medical care when he was rushed into unwarrented brain surgery that resulted in complete disability and death. His family did not know the surgeon had medical malpractice claims against him. This information must now be reported under the new Michael Skolnik Medical Transparency Act.
In a scolding report, the nation’s most influential medical advisory group said that doctors should stop taking much of the money, gifts and free drug samples that they routinely accept from drug and device companies. Supports Grassley/Kohl legislation legislation that would require drug and device makers to publicly disclose all payments made to doctors.
Texas had a hearing on legislation to weaken the medical board.
Connecticut doctors would be prohibited from accepting certain gifts from drug and medical device companies under a plan being considered by lawmakers.
Beth Israel faulted in case but only after the patient challenged the case which was first ruled invalid.
This five-part series details the devastating consequences that occur when public accountability at a local Los Angeles hospital breaks down. (Free site registration required to read other parts of series.)
Chart that shows how many serious disciplinary actions against registered nurses each state reported to a federal database over the past ten years.
Many state medical board websites are not consumer-friendly, and it can be confusing or impossible to find information about a doctor's disciplinary, criminal or malpractice history. In response, journalist William Heisel has created a Google map of "doctors behaving badly" with links to bad doctor new articles.
Includes formal complaints issued against licensed physicians, new physician licenses issued and summary of disciplinary actions taken on board licensed health care providers by the Texas Medical Board.
Steps you can take if you are concerned about your care under a CA physician.
Steps you can take if you are concerned about the quality of care in a CA nursing home.
This brief provides answers questions about what to do if you are concerned about your hospital's quality of care and links to resources that can help. It addresses steps you can take within a hospital or with organizations that regulate or oversee hospitals.
Go to this website for information on fully paid medical malpractice cases (insert physician’s name where indicated and click on “search”).
Go to this website for a profile of your doctor.
Looking for information on Florida physicians? Go to this website for information on licensing verification.
Massachusetts ratings of physician practices.
When our health care system remains silent about preventable medical harm it only creates more problems.
Each state has a different process for investigating and disciplining nurses and for making licensing information available to the public. ProPublica compiled a chart to show which states allow you to verify a nurse’s license for free online, which provide Web access to disciplinary documents, and which participate in a publicly available national database.
NC Medical Board adds medical malpractice reports to Physician search.
Hospitals drop the ball on Physician Oversight
On July 11, 2009, the Los Angeles Times, in conjunction with Pro-Publica, a non-profit investigative news agency, published an article entitled “When Caregivers Harm: Problem Nurses Stay on the Job as Patients Suffer,” charging that Board of Registered Nursing, which oversees California’s more than 350,000 nurses, often takes years to act on complaints of egregious misconduct. Nurses with histories of drug abuse, negligence, violence, and incompetence continue to provide care, and BRN often took more than three years, on average, to investigate and discipline errant nurses.
Public Citizen: The U.S. Health and Human Services has failed to issue a final regulation to implement a 22 year old law (called Section 1921 of the Social Security Act) that would expand the National Practitioner Data Bank and allow over 5,000 hospitals and about 700 nursing homes access to disciplinary records on nurses and other allied health professionals.
Select your state from an interactive map to find out what physician background reporting is available in your state. Knowing the background information on your doctor could your life.
http://www.patientsrighttoknow.org/
Health Watch USA is a non-profit organization dedicated to patient advocacy, health care transparency and the promotion of consumer driven health care.
http://www.healthwatchusa.org/
The Consumer Health Quality Council (a coalition of Health Care for All) empowers those impacted by health care quality issues to have a voice in our health care system, to engage fellow consumers to be active partners in their health care, and to advocate for high quality, safe, and accessible health care for all Massachusetts residents.
http://hcfa.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.viewPage&pageId=546&grandparentID=531&parentID=544
Mothers Against Medical Error (MAME) is a South Carolina-based group that works with medical error victims, healthcare professionals, and legislators to promote its mission of providing support to victims of medical harm; educating policymakers and the public about patient safety issues; and advocating for improvements in healthcare policy. Areas in which MAME has been active include medical education reform, hospital infection reporting, in-hospital patient support systems, and disclosure of medical error.
Contact: Helen Haskell mamemoms@gmail.com
http://www.mamemomsonline.org/CT Center for Patient Safety works in our communities, within our healthcare systems, and with elected officials to improve the quality of healthcare and to protect the rights of injured patients through education, accountability and advocacy. We believe that quality healthcare is a right.
more information about our doctors is a good thing!
http://www.argusleader.com/article/20090324/NEWS/903240306/1001
More than 290,000 surgical site infections occur in U.S. hospitals each year. Patients who acquire infections from surgery spend, on average, an additional 6.5 days in the hospital, are five times more likely to be readmitted after discharge, and twice as likely to die.
Surgery patients are at risk for infection because surgical incisions create a pathway for germs to enter the body. Maintaining a sterile environment in the operating room is therefore critical to protect patients from being contaminated with bacteria, which can lead to infection.
How well is your hospital, state and the nation as a whole are performing on three key practices that help prevent infections during surgery? Find out here »
After Michael Skolnik passed out in September 2001, his neurosurgeon told his parents that Michael needed to have brain surgery within two days. The three hour operation lasted six hours with no cyst ever being found. This marked the beginning of a 32-month nightmare of brain surgeries, infections, and more than $4,000,000 in medical bills.
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In 2001, Patty and David Skolnik spent nearly three years watching their only child, Michael, play victim to a broken system as a result of unnecessary brain surgery. Due to medical error caused by negligence and incompetence, routine expectations of our healthcare system proved ineffective in providing quality medical care and patient safety for 22 year old Michael Skolnik.
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