Falls in hospitals can cause serious personal injury and sometimes death. Every year hundreds of thousands of people are falling in hospitals, rehabilitation centers, nursing facilities or other healthcare facilities. 30 to 50% of them will sustain injury. Elderly people are not the only ones at risk. Medical conditions, medication, surgery,…
Hospital medical malpractice is the third leading cause of death in this country, behind heart disease and cancer. In a recent article in the New York Times, a retired transplant surgeon explains how an unresponsive medical staff left him no other choice but to break into into the crash cart, a…
To precribe Proglycem (diazoxide) to a baby with risk factors for pulmonary hypertension can be medical malpractice leading to severe personal injury. FDA MedWatch, the FDA Safety Information and Adverse Event Reporting Program recently released a drug safety communication to warn that 11 cases of pulmonary hypertension in infants and…
More than 12,500 patients of a New York Hospital had their financial records compromised after an assistant clerk sold them for $3 a piece to a ringleader who made purchases at various high end retailers in Manhattan. Between January and June 2013 32 year old Monique Walker who worked in the financial…
Hospital negligence can sometimes also happen outside of the hospital when a healthcare facility doesn’t proprely mitigate the risk of vehicular theft in front of its entrance. In a recent blog post, the Joint Commission is warning about reports of patients and other individuals who have been stealing ambulances, delivery vans, police cruisers snow…
After two patients died and many other suffered personal injury from a recent “superbug”outbreak involving duodenoscopes, the safety of these medical devices (see previous blog) and the method used by hospitals to reprocess them are being questioned. In a recent Hazard Report, the ECRI Institute is recommending culturing Duodenoscopes as a key…
Sharing diabetes pens among patients is a gross medical malpractice that can lead to transmission of infections and viruses such as HIV and hepatitis viruses. According to the FDA, since 2008 thousands of patients may have been exposed to blood-borne pathogens from the sharing of multi-dose pen devices for insulin and other…
Since 2009, the FDA has been aware that duodenoscopes manufactured by Japanese companies Olympus, Pentax and Fujifilm have been at the origin of the spread of sometimes fatal spread of pathogens but did nothing to change the situation. Hospitals that faced such outbreaks began sterilizing the devices more rigorously and the transmission…
Reports of medical staff suffering personal injury after being attacked by patients or patient’s visitors are on the rise. Recent cases of extreme violence such as one involving a 68 year old patient attacking nurses with a metallic bar that he pulled from a bed (see video) or the death…
Medical negligence by doctors or medical staff who do not respect cleaning procedures or fail to discard contaminated implements are often the reason why hospital patients are getting infected by contaminated instruments. Yesterday, UCLA Medical Center announced that 179 patients may have been infected by the super-bug bacteria carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) transmitted…