Healthcare Risk Management articles from January 2003

Healthcare Risk Management archives from January 2003

Patient safety the VA way: one hospital can point the way for others to follow: its focus is prevention, not punishment.(U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs)
January 1, 2003... The efforts by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to improve patient safety are paying huge dividends for the hundreds of hospitals participating in its system of adverse-event reporting and analysis, suggesting that other health care...

These tools show cause of close calls, adverse events.
January 1, 2003... These are the categories of triage questions used the Veterans Affairs National Center for Patient Safety (NCPS) to help health care providers determine what really led to an adverse event or close call. The NCPS training tools provide specific...

VA program for surgical quality called a success.(Department of Veterans Affairs)
January 1, 2003... The Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) patient safety system can be mined for strategies that could work well in your own organization, but another successful program from the VA could be directly available to all hospitals within a year The...

Crash carts must be locked; beware of delays involved. (Reader Question).
January 1, 2003... Question: I understand that the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations requires that crash carts be locked when not in use during an emergency, but how must they be locked? It seems that some obvious solutions wouldn't be...

Ten steps can improve a risk manager's image. (Reader Question).
January 1, 2003... Health care risk managers have suffered from image problem for too long, and 10 simple steps can greatly improve the way everyone else in your organization thinks of you, says Geri Amori, PhD, ARM, FASHRM, president of Communicating HealthCare,...

ECRI issues alert on some thoracic catheters. (Reader Question).(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... An independent health care safety watchdog as issued a critical alert to hospitals regarding a potential threat to patient safety caused by some thoracic catheters in Pharmaseal Thoracentesis Trays distributed by McGaw Park, IL-based Allegiance...

Bar codes help reduce some medication errors. (Reader Question).
January 1, 2003... A study at the University of Wisconsin (UW) Hospital and Clinics in Madison shows the hospital has reduced medication administration errors by 87% with the use of a hand-held wireless bar code scanner. By employing a hand-held bar code...

Pennsylvania hospitals still fighting insurance crisis. (Reader Question).
January 1, 2003... Pennsylvania's hospitals continue to struggle with the medical professional liability insurance crisis, according to a new member survey conducted by The Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania (HAP). The survey found that...

Tenet: when is a physician an independent contractor? (Reader Question).(Tenet Healthcare Corp.)
January 1, 2003... Tenet Healthcare Corporation's claim that it considers Redding, CA, physicians as independent contractors, as opposed to hospital employees, will do nothing to lessen the company's exposure from a rapidly growing list of lawsuits filed by...

Most hospitals ill-prepared to deal with bioterrorism. (Reader Question).
January 1, 2003... In spite of heightened awareness of bioterrorism, and the recent terrorist threat to hospitals in key U.S. cities, 70% of hospital emergency department (ED) managers polled at a recent conference revealed that their hospitals are not prepared...

Study: 10% of children get wrong dosages in the ED. (Reader Question).
January 1, 2003... Ten percent of children treated in the emergency department (ED) may get the wrong dose of medicine or be administered medication at the incorrect frequency, according to a new study. The highest risk was for children seen between 4 a.m....

Nursing shortage affects patient postsurgery survival. (Reader Question).(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... The ongoing nursing shortage can have a direct effect on a patient's survival after surgery, according to a new study. Linda H. Aiken, MD, from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, surveyed more than 10,000 staff nurses and...

CE questions.
January 1, 2003... For more information about the continuing education program, contact customer service at (800) 688-2421 or by e-mail, customerservice@ahcpub.com. 1. Veterans Affairs employees are encouraged to report observations about accidents or...

Construction brings opportunity to boost patient safety: safety-oriented planning should precede building process.
January 1, 2003... Health care facility construction, whether a new building or an expansion of an existing medical center, can present a number of challenges, not the least of which is maintaining quality of care and patient safety if the work involves adding on...

Test interventions for improving safety.
January 1, 2003... Spurred by the Institute of Medicine report and a strong ongoing concern for patient safety, the University of Michigan Health System (UMHS) in Ann Arbor has instituted a far-reaching program called the Patient Safety Enhancement Program...

Hot water for tea burns a patient, costing a hospital $100,000.
January 1, 2003... News: An elderly man was admitted to a hospital for observation. The following morning, the patient spilled hot tea in his lap during breakfast, resulting in bums severe enough to require surgical repair. The patient brought suit against the...

Scalding hot water enema leads to $1.65M verdict.
January 1, 2003... News: An elderly woman with end-stage Alzheimer's disease was admitted to the hospital for pneumonia. On the third day of her stay, she was given an enema containing scalding hot water, which caused first- and second-degree bums. The bums were...

HIPAA privacy guidance seeks to maximize voluntary enforcement.(Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act )
January 1, 2003... Enforcement rule is in drafting stage In December 2002, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Civil Rights (OCR) released an extensive guidance outlining various aspects of the privacy portion of the Health Insurance...

HHS outlines major changes in privacy.(Department of Health and Human Services)
January 1, 2003... The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has said for months that HIPAA would continue to be a work in progress. The agency proved that again last month when it added a new section to the guidance on public health disclosures and...

How to deal with family members under HIPAA: facilitywide culture change may be necessary.(Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act )
January 1, 2003... One of the many challenges facing providers under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), particularly in the context of oncology, cardiac surgery, and OB-GYN services, involves health care services provided to a family...

Survey finds major progress toward HIPAA compliance: HHCA compares old, new responses.(Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, Health Care Compliance Association)
January 1, 2003... According to a survey just released by the Minneapolis-based Health Care Compliance Association (HCCA), the health care industry is continuing to take the necessary steps to ensure compliance with sweeping changes required by the Health...

How to draft documents for HIPAA implementation: know requirements for consent, covered entities.
January 1, 2003... The first task in drafting and negotiating Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) documents is to understand the requirements for consent, business associates, and covered entities. By now, most providers know that...

Feds offer database for record disclosures.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has created a Privacy Accountability Database to aid in tracking, reporting, and accounting the disclosures made from all CMS systems of records permitted by the Privacy Act of 1974 and the...

Web site answers FAQs about HIPAA.(Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act )(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... A "Frequently Asked Questions" document about the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy rule is posted on the Department of Health and Human Services' web site. The document answers questions ranging from...