The COVID-19 pandemic is a healthcare crisis of unimaginable scope, but some good may come from these difficult times. One example may be a heightened awareness of the need for good personal hygiene and cleaning in our hospitals and other healthcare facilities.
Of the various types of serious and preventable medical errors, perhaps the one posing the greatest fatal risk is a hospital-acquired infection (HAI). This is exactly what it sounds like: A patient incurs an infection during a hospital stay for medical treatment.
Common Types of Serious Hospital-Acquired Infections
Federal Hours of Service rules dictate how long commercial truck drivers can be on the road and impose mandatory rest periods. The rules, enacted December 2017, addressed the significant number of fatal truck accidents involving fatigued truck drivers.
The trucking industry generally objected to these rules and the federal government listened. On March 2, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration submitted changes to the Hours of Service rules – labeled a Final Rule – to the White House Office of Management and Budget.
The FMCSA has not provided details to the proposed ...
Earlier this year a jury awarded a Missouri farmer $265 million in a lawsuit over economic damages his operation suffered when dicamba herbicide drifted onto his peach orchards, destroying much of his livelihood. This was the first lawsuit filed by farmers alleging damages due to off-target movement of dicamba and the first one to go to trial. But it is far from the only dicamba lawsuit.
Farmers across the country have filed other dicamba lawsuits in state and federal courts. In February 2018, all federal dicamba lawsuits were consolidated for retrial purposes by the Judicial Panel on ...
St. Louis has a higher rate of people killed in traffic accidents involving speeding drivers than most every other U.S. city. In a recently released survey, only six cities in the country rated higher for speeding deaths as a percentage of all fatal car crashes between 2013 and 2017. Only two of those cities are bigger, population-wise, than St. Louis: Cleveland and Washington, D.C.
Compare Auto Insurance, an online automobile insurance resource site, examined historical data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and determined that St. Louis has among the worst ...
When it comes to providing quality healthcare and keeping patients safe from serious medical errors, bigger is not necessarily better. As with most businesses, the reason for hospital consolidations is to become more efficient and to improve the bottom line. Reducing costs, eliminating duplications, streamlining workforces, and increasing areas of coverage are common goals of hospital mergers.
The trend in the U.S. hospital industry for several years is consolidation – hospital systems buying up other medical facilities. According to the National Institute for Health Care ...
Nearly one out of every four commercial truck drivers says they received inadequate training when they started work.
That’s per a recent survey conducted by Stay Metrics, a company that provides training tools to the trucking industry. The private research (“First Impression Survey,”), made available last December, purports that 24% of big rig drivers feel their orientation training was lacking.
Some of this orientation deals with company-specific policies. But a large portion of the inadequate truck driver training has to do with federal rules and regulations ...
As many as 400,000 patients are harmed because of surgical errors every year. And those mistakes made during surgery are preventable, according to a report issued last year.
“Analysis of Human Performance Deficiencies Associated with Surgical Adverse Events,” published July 31, 2019 by JAMA Network Open, an online portal to numerous medical journals, examined surgical errors made at three hospitals. The researchers reviewed the records of 5,352 operations.
Surgical Adverse Events That Harm Patients
They identified 188 adverse events – something gone wrong that can ...
As the number of people killed in commercial truck accidents continues to climb, some in the trucking industry continue to decry measures aimed at preventing fatal tractor-trailer crashes.
Safety measures have taken hold for passenger vehicles, both in terms of onboard technology features and drivers acting more cautiously. The results are evident; U.S. fatal motor vehicle crashes have steadily fallen in recent years.
The same is not true for the nation’s commercial trucking sector. In the last 10 years are so, deadly big rig accidents have trended upward.
Despite all of this ...
According to research released last month, as many as one out of every four patients suffer from a medical error every year.
The Foundation for the Development of Innovative Health Safety, a Boston-based, international nonprofit organization focused on improving medical care, published in January a white paper on medical errors that harm patients in this country and around the world. It examined treatment in hospitals as well as outpatient medical centers to evaluate the physical and economic toll medical errors take on patients and their families.
1 Out of 4 Patients Harmed by ...
Based on the number of truck drivers who failed drug tests last year, the federal government is increasing the number of mandated drug tests for truckers this year.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced late December 2019 that it is doubling the rate of random drug tests for commercial truck driver beginning this year. As of January 1, 2020, the minimum rate of random truck driver drug testing jumped from the previous 25% to 50%.
The decision to dramatically raise the rate of testing for truckers under the influence of illegal drugs was mandated by federal ...
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