Articles Tagged with medical malpractice

Failure to provide adequate cyber security in a healthcare facility can be medical malpractice. Last year, healthcare became the most frequently hacked industry in the US. According to a recent ECRI analysis, 90% of healthcare providers suffered security breaches in the past. With attackers spending an average of 200 days in a network it is estimated that 1 in 3 Americans will have his or her health records compromised by hackers in 2016. Every patient breached record costs an average of $363. Cyber attacks cost the healthcare industry yearly an average $6 billion. Last year hackers stole $88.4 million by hacking health records.

Quest Diagnostic, a medical laboratory based in New Jersey but handling tests for many New York City Healthcare facilities just announced that it was hacked. 34’000 patients had their data exposed according to the New York Times.

Health records are the main targets of cyber attacks but medial devices are also being hijacked putting patients at risk of dangerous health incidents. To make sure patients are safe and to avoid negligence lawsuits the healthcare industry has to fight back. Equipment needs to be proprely managed and security patches need to be timely implemented. Network security needs to be reviewed on a regular basis. Vulnerable medical devices must be identified. When reusing an electronic medical device on a new patient, the medical staff must make sure that all previous data are erased.  Requests for Proposals to manufacturers or consultants must be exchanged in a cyber safe manner. New devices or patches that are added to the network must be tested before being released.

Wrong patient error is medical malpractice that can have deadly consequences. As healthcare is becoming more and more sophisticated, patients are visiting multiple care providers and their personal data are being shared through multiple IT systems. The growing complexity of the health care system has led to an increase in patient errors according to a recent report released by the ECRI Institute.

The report entitled “Deep Dive” is based on the analysis of more than 7,500 events of patient identification errors.  The researchers found that most identification errors are corrected before they affect the patients. However some do reach the patients. Some patient identification errors may have limited consequences. For example, a nursing home resident was mistaken for another resident and taken for an unnecessary exam to an affiliated hospital. Other identification errors can have dangerous consequences. An infant was infected with hepatitis B after receiving breast milk pumped from the wrong mother. Some wrong patient errors can be fatal. A patient who suffered cardiac arrest was not resuscitated because the medical staff followed a “do-not-resuscitate” order from another patient.

Wrong patient errors can happen at all stages of a medical process, from registration to electronic data entry, surgical intervention, medication administration, diagnostic or blood transfusion. They can occur in various settings such as nursing homes, doctor offices, hospitals or pharmacies. They are not only committed by doctors but also by nurses, transporters, medical secretaries or anyone else from the medical staff interacting with the patient. Often as the patient is mistaken for another one, the error doesn’t affect only one person but two.

If you learn that your doctor was sued for medical malpractice, should you immediately change doctors? A recent article in Consumer Reports  explains how patients can find information about their doctor and what they should do about it.

Not every doctor who was sued for medical malpractice is a bad doctor.  Consumer Reports talked to Michelle M. Mello, a Professor of Law and of Health Research and Policy  at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Mello is an expert on the medical malpractice system, medical error and patient safety. She told Consumer Reports that very often medical malpractice lawsuits “are not the best indicator of substandard care” for several reasons.  For example:

• The lawsuit may settle before a trial without the doctor admitting his error