Medical error is more commonplace than many Americans realize. According to Consumer Reports, an estimated 440,000 Americans die each year after suffering medical errors. To be fair, it isn’t clear how closely medical errors are tied to those patient...
Detroit Medical Malpractice Law Blog
Group publishes results of latest safety ratings for Michigan hospitals
For consumers of medical services, which is all of us, the way we approach purchasing health care is very different from the way we think about purchasing, say, a home, car or electric razor. For the average person, it is very difficult to make any kind of objective...
Doctors and the refusal to provide medical care
A recent article in the Huffington Post, looking at the current Ebola epidemic and the risk here in the United States, asked the interesting question of whether or not physicians have a duty to treat patients who present the symptoms of Ebola. While we would like to...
Frequency of medication errors among children is surprising
Medical errors come in a variety of forms, including birth injuries, surgical errors, failure to diagnose, and so on. One form of medical error that is often overlooked, though, is medication errors. Mistakes with respect to the type and amount of medication are very...
Researchers suggest developing blood test for general cancer screening
What if there was a single test doctors could use to screen for various types of cancer? A recent research effort conducted at the National Cancer Research Institute in Liverpool looked at thousands of previous scientific publications with the aim of determining...
CDC to establish guidelines for keeping Ebola at bay
Medical errors can have serious consequences for patients, including serious injury and death. When it comes to fighting the potential threat of Ebola in the United States, though, medical error could have a much more wide-spread negative impact, potentially affecting...
Fremont pharmacy accused of medication mix-up
In medical care, patients expect that those who give them medical advice, administer treatment, and write prescriptions know what they are talking about and are careful to avoid errors. The same is true for pharmacists--we trust that our pharmacists are doing their...
Careless prescription of NSAIDs can lead to serious consequences
Most of our readers are probably familiar with the term NSAID, which stands for non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Common examples of NSAIDs include ibuprofen, aspirin and naproxen. As pain relievers, NSAIDs can be effective but they carry certain risks, such as...
Overuse of antibiotics increasing incidence of resistant strains
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 2 million Americans are estimated to fall ill every year because of an antibiotic-resistant infection, with 23,000 of them ultimately succumbing to these illnesses. The problem is a growing one, and...
Ebola scare in Texas a reminder of the risk of ER medical errors
Readers have probably all heard of the current concerns about the spread of Ebola from West Africa to other countries, including the United States. The scare came from the fact that a Texas man had contracted the virus while travelling in West Africa. When he checked...