Healthcare Risk Management articles from December 2004

Healthcare Risk Management archives from December 2004

Think in terms of access: radioactive material on site could tempt terrorists: more caution needed than ever before, experts say.
December 1, 2004... Risk managers may have thought about their facilities as potential targets of terrorists, but have you ever considered that you might be the source of nuclear material used in an attack? If you don't act now to ensure you have strict...

Prepare your hospital for a very unusual flu season: vaccine shortages may wreak havoc with hospital EDs, absenteeism.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... With the unprecedented shortage of influenza vaccine this flu season, hospitals are scrambling to prepare for what may be a record number of flu patients presenting to their already overcrowded emergency departments (EDs) and for staff...

In-house theft may be a bigger risk than burglary.
December 1, 2004... If terrorists want to acquire radioactive materials in your facility, they may not do it by breaking in to the oncology department in the middle of the night. They might just pay a technician to steal the material for them, says Ray Eganey, a...

Report missing radioactive material promptly.
December 1, 2004... One of the best ways to thwart any attempt at stealing nuclear materials from your facility is to take seriously any report of missing material, says Fred Roll, president of the International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety in...

JCAHO: awareness during anesthesia is a problem.(Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations )
December 1, 2004... A terrifying failure during general anesthesia, once thought to be so rare that it did not warrant much attention, actually is common enough that risk managers should launch a specific, focused effort at reducing the problem, known as...

JCAHO says risk managers play a role with awareness.(Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations )(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Dennis S. O'Leary, MD, president of JCAHO, tells Healthcare Risk Management that risk managers should take a lead role in ensuring that all staff members are aware of the problem of anesthesia awareness. "The patient who has had such an...

Anesthesia awareness is concern of many players.
December 1, 2004... Anesthesia awareness is not just a problem for the anesthesia department. That was a key message of JCAHO when it issued its recent Sentinel Event Alert on the issue. Preventing this terrible outcome requires the interaction of many...

Organ donation shows risk from local coroners.
December 1, 2004... The story spread across the national media like wildfire, and it sounded like a real nightmare for health care risk managers: Two hospitals in Colorado were accused of harvesting a man's organs before he was declared dead. The coroner actually...

Insurer refuses to pay for wrong-site/person surgery.
December 1, 2004... The movement to prevent wrong-site or wrong-person surgery got another boost recently when a major health plan announced that on Jan. 1, 2005, it will stop paying for medical procedures involving those egregious errors. And don't expect to get...

LA County: patient dies as nurse turns off audio alarm.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Los Angeles County officials reported recently that a patient at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center died after a nurse turned down an audio alarm on his vital signs monitor and then failed to notice that he was having a heart attack....

Nurses must judge quality of consent to be a witness.(Reader Question)
December 1, 2004... Question: We've recently become aware that some of our nurses are uncomfortable with witnessing a patient's informed consent when they don't think the patient truly understands what he has been told, or that the physician has not adequately...

CE questions.
December 1, 2004... Nurses participate in this continuing education program by reading the issue, using the provided references for further research, and studying the questions at the end of the issue. Participants should select what they believe to be the correct...