A patient safety watchdog organization gives only a third of St. Louis-area hospitals its top grade for preventing medical errors that can seriously harm patients.
The Leapfrog Group is a national nonprofit organization focused on improving the safety of medical care. Twice a year it provides letter grades (“A” the highest, “F” the lowest) for hospitals in St. Louis and across the country. It just released its Spring 2020 hospital safety grades.
The grades are based on 30 patient safety measurements. Leapfrog asserts that its safety grading system “…is the only rating ...
Law enforcement will spend one week this summer focused even more heavily on stopping unsafe car drivers and unsafe commercial truck drivers – with good reason.
The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance announced it will conduct this year’s Operation Safe Driver Week July 10-16. The nonprofit organization, comprised of police and other roadway safety officials, has held this event for several years.
It will be a coordinated effort between police in the U.S, Canada and Mexico to identify dangerous drivers and then report their findings.
Negligent Driving
According to CVSA ...
On the heels of 2022 Patient Safety Awareness Week, established by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, another patient safety organization released its list of top patient safety concerns for 2022.
IHI, a nonprofit group that for 30 years has focused on making healthcare safer, marked March 13-19 as 2022 Patient Safety Awareness Week, noting that as many as 400,000 U.S. patients die every year from a preventable medical error.
Identifying potential errors is the first step in preventing them. ECRI, another organization whose mission is to make healthcare safer, recently ...
The latest federal report shows that fatal motor vehicle crashes continue to climb and points to two negligent driving behaviors as major contributors.
In early March the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration released “Overview of Motor Vehicle Crashes in 2020,” a comprehensive look at car and commercial truck accidents for the most recent year with finalized data.
A recent rise in fatal motor vehicle accidents continued in 2020, according to the NHTSA report. Nearly 39,000 people died in car crashes and truck crashes that year – a nearly 7% jump in ...
A new survey of hospital administrators reveals that patient safety falls only in the middle of their range of top concerns.
Preventable medical errors occur frequently, and they can be catastrophic. According to research, medical errors may be the third leading cause of death in the United States.
Preventable medical errors take many forms, including:
- Hospital-acquired infections
- Wrong-site surgery
- Medication administration mistakes
Each one can occur in a hospital, which makes the hospital administrator survey findings concerning.
In early February 2022, the American ...
An organization focused on making commercial trucking safer recently released its inaugural report on fatal truck crashes. The report highlights common causes of fatal truck wrecks and provides recommendations to curb contributing negligent behavior.
The Institute for Safer Trucking is a nonprofit organization that promotes commercial trucking public safety issues. It has identified its top priorities in this effort, which include:
- Automatic emergency braking systems for large commercial trucks
- Speed limiters for large commercial trucks
The group published its Safer ...
Radiologists are physicians who diagnose medical conditions using imaging technology, such as X-rays and CT scans. They are trained to interpret diagnostic images. They typically review imaging test results and report their findings to a referring physician.
Their role in medical treatment can be vital. When radiologists make a misdiagnosis, the consequences for patients can be very serious.
Types of Medical Misdiagnosis
Misdiagnosis is a common type of medical error. A misdiagnosis generally falls into one of the following categories:
- A missed diagnosis
- A wrong diagnosis
- A ...
Revised federal regulations for training new commercial truck drivers are now in place, but will they help reduce the rising tide of fatal trucking accidents?
New federal commercial truck driver training regulations became effective February 7, 2022. They are for those who are:
- Obtaining a Commercial Driver’s License for the first time
- Upgrading their CDL from Class B to Class A
- Obtaining a CDL enhancement, called endorsements, to haul hazardous materials or drive a school bus or other vehicles with numerous passengers
So these revised training regulations don’t apply to most ...
A recent review of medical malpractice lawsuits spotlighted how often communication issues are cited in serious medical error allegations - and just how frequently those issues are preventable.
Poor communication among healthcare providers can be especially dangerous during patient handoffs. Patient handoffs occur during healthcare provider transitions. The transitions can be when one shift of hospital caregivers replaces another, or when a patient is sent to a different medical facility or a different unit within the same hospital.
Maintaining continuity of care is ...
More than eight out of 10 plastic surgeons have been sued for medical malpractice, according to a recent examination of medical malpractice lawsuits. A different report sheds even more light on plastic surgery medical malpractice claims.
Medscape, an online medical publication, last month released its study of medical malpractice lawsuits, which included some 4,300 physicians in 29 specialties. “Medscape Malpractice Report 2021” revealed the medical specialties sued most often practiced in:
- Plastic surgery
- General surgery
- Orthopedics
- Urology
- OB/GYN
- Specialized ...
RSS Feed