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Improving Health & Safety Through Innovation and Awareness
Browsing All Posts filed under »Monitoring Liability and Costs«
Near-Miss Data Show Signs of Trouble Outside OR
Anesthesiology News recently published an article “Near-Miss Data Show Signs of Trouble Outside OR“, which discusses the research conducted by Angela Lipshutz, MD, MPH (critical care fellow, University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine) and her colleagues. Below is the letter to editors of Anesthesiology News from Michael Wong, executive director of the Physician-Patient Alliance […]
Reducing Errors by More than 60 Percent: PPAHS Presents at the Northern Regional Respiratory Care Conference
May 10, 2013 by Sean Power
by Sean Power Last week, the Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety presented two cases in which health care facilities reduced PCA-related adverse drug events with continuous electronic monitoring. Experts estimate that anywhere from 600,000 to 2,000,000 PCA errors occur each year. As Dr. Richard Dutton, Executive Director of the Anesthesia Quality Institute, states, “PCA […]
5 Resources on the Costs of Adverse Events
February 28, 2013 by Sean Power
by Sean Power Patient safety advocates at hospitals sometimes face roadblocks when introducing new safety measures. One approach to overcome these obstacles involves looking at the financial costs absorbed when things go wrong. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This article explores the legal costs associated with adverse events and ways […]
5 Questions Answered about Never Events and Patient-Controlled Analgesia Pumps
January 31, 2013 by Sean Power
by Sean Power What are Never Events? Never Events are 28 preventable actions or mistakes that should never happen in a health care setting, which include: Patient death or serious disability associated with a medication error (e.g., errors involving the wrong drug, wrong dose, wrong patient, wrong time, wrong rate, wrong preparation or wrong route […]
Case Study in How to Eliminate Adverse Events, Improve Patient Safety, and Reduce Healthcare Costs
April 25, 2012 by Michael Wong
by Michael Wong St. Joseph’s/Candler Hospitals (SJ/C) in Savannah, Georgia, are two of the oldest continuously operating hospitals in the US. About 10 years ago, SJ/C had three opioid-related events with patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) with serious outcomes over a two-year period. Fortunately, none of these adverse events resulted in deaths, says Carolyn Williams, RPh, Medication […]
Improving Hospital Efficiency and Patient Safety: Bedside Monitoring with Capnography Achieves Better Management of Surgical Patients with Obstructive Sleep Apnea
April 5, 2012 by Michael Wong
by Michael Wong Like many hospitals in North America, Kelowna General Hospital (KGH) in British Columbia was challenged with providing safe and appropriate perioperative and postoperative management of patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). KGH is a 345-bed tertiary hospital in the interior of British Columbia, Canada. Richard Milo, RRT (Professional Practice Leader, Central Okanagan […]
Who should set medical standards — doctors or lawyers?
February 29, 2012 by Michael Wong
by Peter A. Corsale (Gallop, Johnson & Neuman, L.C.) & Michael Wong (Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety) Medical standards should be set by doctors. The alternative is dangerous. While medical journals and academia may wrestle with what constitutes the standard of care, at the end of a trial the average juror, who will have […]
Breathing Easier with Capnography – A New Standard of Care?
November 15, 2011 by Michael Wong
by Peter A. Corsale (Gallop, Johnson & Neuman, L.C., St. Louis, Missouri) The Center for Medicare and Medicaid forecasts that between 2010 and 2020, the average annual health spending growth (5.8%) will outpace the annual growth in the overall economy by 4.7% and comprise 19.8% of the GDP ($4.6 trillion). With such amounts dedicated to health services, […]
How often do errors with patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) occur?
October 31, 2011 by Michael Wong
by Michael Wong Many readers of this website have asked, how often do errors with patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) occur? In a retrospective analysis lead by Rodney Hicks (who at the time of the study was Manager, Patient Safety Research and Practice, United States Pharmacopeia), the magnitude, frequency, and nature of non-harmful and harmful medication errors associated […]
May 31, 2013 by Michael Wong
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