Back in 1970, the first surgery center that wasn't in a hospital opened in Phoenix, Arizona. The pioneers who opened the center had a good thought, or so it seemed at the time. Medicare seemed to appreciate the fact that minor surgeries were much less expensive at...
There are certain things that should never happen in an operating room. Because of how often such things do happen, patient safety advocates have launched major efforts in recent years to put policies and processes in place to prevent these so-called "never events"...
Medical errors come in a variety of forms, but some are more common than others. Some medical errors are preventable, while others are not as easily preventable. Dealing with a serious but preventable medical error can be extremely difficult, not only because of the...
If you drive west of Detroit for about 8 hours, you will come to the small Iowa town of Lisbon, near Cedar Rapids. Named after the capital of Portugal, the town of about 2,000 is home to a woman who recently filed a medical malpractice lawsuit over surgical errors...
We have previously written on this blog about the results of an annual survey conducted by The Leapfrog Group, which rates hospitals according to how well they avoid medical errors and patient harm in the delivery of health care services. The survey is aimed at...
In our last post, we began speaking about the persistence of surgical errors despite efforts to prevent them. Wrong-site, wrong-procedure and wrong-patient errors are particularly concerning because of the serious impact they can have on the patients...
Getting a surgical procedure can be a nerve-racking experience for many people, not only because surgery has its own inherent risks, but also because most the public is aware of the fact that surgeons and other health care providers are not perfect and do occasionally...
An important task for any surgical residency program is how to evaluate the skills of its surgeons in training. Thorough and effective training, of course, ensures surgeons are equipped to succeed in their work and that patients entrusted to their case will receive...
Mistakes can happen in any medical or surgical procedure, and even the most skilled of physicians don’t perform perfectly with every patient. Sometimes mistakes have little to no long-term effect, and are nothing to worry about. In other cases, the long-term...
Toward the end of 2011, a hospital in another state began doing heart surgery on infants. By June 2015, no less than nine babies died at the hospital. Michigan readers might be relieved to know that -- finally, in Aug. 2015 -- the program was shut down due to...
