September 2012 Archives

The world of American medicine is far deadlier: Medical mistakes kill enough people each week to fill four jumbo jets. But these mistakes go largely unnoticed by the world at large, and the medical community rarely learns from them. The same preventable mistakes are made over and over again, and patients are left in the dark about which hospitals have significantly better (or worse) safety records than their peers.

MUNICH  -- Atrial fibrillation patients on anticoagulation therapy don't require clopidogrel (Plavix) plus aspirin following stenting and it's aspirin, not clopidogrel, that should be omitted, researchers said.

MUNICH  -  Globally, more than 10% of patients with atrial fibrillation who present to the emergency department are dead within a year, an analysis of the RE-LY AF registry showed.

Fighting healthcare fraud in the U.S. can seem like an endless game of whack-a-mole. When government fraud squads crack down on one scheme, another pops up close by. But the fraud squads who look for scams in the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs have some new weapons: tools and funding provided by the health law.

WASHINGTON  -  The overhauled United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) kidney transplant allocation guidelines will likely remove a controversial age-matching component from its algorithm, researchers said here.

A combination of best practices, improved safety culture, and a bigger focus on teamwork cut central-line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs) in hospitals by 40%, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) reported.

A new report from a panel of experts convened by the Institute of Medicine estimated that roughly 30 percent of health care spending in 2009 -- around $750 billion -- was wasted on unnecessary or poorly delivered services and other needless costs. Lack of coordination at every point in the health care system is a big culprit. The panel cited studies showing that 20 percent of patients reported test results or medical records that were not transferred from one place to another in time for an appointment, requiring additional tests or visits.

As you grow older, you are more likely to develop long-term health conditions that require taking multiple medications. Many older people also take over-the-counter (OTC) medications, vitamins, or supplements. As a result, older adults have a higher risk of overmedication and unwanted drug reactions (adverse drug events).

June 13, 2012

Voice: State Rep. Stacy Erwin Oakes

LANSING, MI - State Sen. Roger Kahn is facing allegations that he harangued a constituent who traveled to the Capitol to testify against medical malpractice legislation he supports.

BELOW IS A COPY OF A LETTER THAT WAS SENT TO THE JUDICIAL COMMITTEE OF THE MICHIGAN HOUSE OF REPRESNTATIVES ON MAY 30, 2012 BY ATTORNEY STEPHEN GOETHEL

You are having major surgery and it doesn't go well.  Your doctor contends even though mistakes were made, at the time he or she thought they were doing the right thing

LANSING, MI -- Some 300 people turned out for testimony on proposed changes to Michigan's medical malpractice laws.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) -- Iowa has  agreed to pay $3.75 million to settle a lawsuit that claimed negligence by  University of Iowa hospital employees during a birth that caused a baby to have  brain injuries that left him severely retarded, newly released  records show.

PHILADELPHIA, June 1, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- A jury awarded $6.4 million to the young children of a Philadelphia man after finding that emergency room doctors misdiagnosed a heart condition as pneumonia and discharged him from the hospital only for him to die months later.

Darla Morris broke her left ankle while working as a nursing assistant in 2005. Over the next five years, she underwent four surgeries to correct the problem.