It's not easy to start a movement, but a new group of physicians and healthcare researchers are hoping to do so. They are looking to the Institute of Medicine to bolster their efforts to reduce diagnosis errors that lead to delayed or inappropriate treatments.
“It's affecting hundreds of thousands of people a year, but it gets very little attention from healthcare organizations and physicians in general,” said Dr. Mark Graber, founder and president of the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine. “We haven't encountered any pushback, it's more just apathy.”
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While the patient-centered medical home has been touted as the foundation for a better coordinated and more efficient healthcare system, experts now say medical home practices need to be connected to other parts of the healthcare system. To this end, the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative has released a report listing 10 “essential” health information technology tools needed to make these population health connections.
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New research calls into question the validity of using post-operative blood clot rates as a metric of hospital quality. According to a study published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, rates of venous thromboembolism—a term that includes pulmonary embolism and deep vein thrombosis—could be skewed by surveillance bias.
Such bias can occur in hospitals that have more expansive screening criteria for VTE, including the testing of asymptomatic patients, or in hospitals that rely more heavily on imaging for diagnosis, said the authors, who analyzed data from the CMS' Hospital Compare, the American Hospital Association and Medicare claims.
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A scheduled House committee hearing on the Food and Drug Administration's progress toward implementing a federal law requiring it to develop a regulatory strategy for health information technology was postponed Thursday, as the government shutdown continued into its third day.
Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, director of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, was scheduled to testify before the Health Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on the Food and Drug Administration Safety Innovation Act.
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Diagnostic errors produce the vast majority of medical malpractice suits related to primary-care practice, and it's harder to successfully defend such cases than other types of malpractice suits, according to a report in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Using health information technology to prevent these errors should be a priority, the authors said.
Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and other Massachusetts organizations examined malpractice cases handled and closed by the state's two largest medical liability insurers from January 2005 through December 2009. They found 551 (7.7%) cases were primary-care related and, of these, 397 (72.1%) were associated with diagnosis errors.
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Wachter
At the sixth International Conference on Diagnostic Error in Medicine on Wednesday, Dr. Robert Wachter gave a quick history of patient safety and quality improvement but noted that activity to reduce diagnostic errors was noticeably absent from the movement's timeline.
“There's still not a lot of action promoting this agenda,” said Wachter, professor and associate chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. He made the remark after describing events that took place after the Institute of Medicine published “To Err is Human,” its report on medical errors, in 1999.
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The humble stretcher used for transporting patients has gone high-tech and high-cost. The average price paid for stretchers jumped 20% over the past year as more hospitals purchased costlier models that have complex features, such as motorized drives or compatibility with X-ray imaging devices, according to the Modern Healthcare/ECRI Institute Technology Price Index. But one expert raised questions about whether the technological advances are worth the price.
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A trade group representing the orthotics and prosthetics industry is accusing the CMS of failing to enforce anti-fraud and abuse laws against unlicensed providers at a time when legitimate providers are coming under fire from increasingly aggressive Medicare recovery auditors.
The American Orthotic and Prosthetic Association—which represents more than 2,000 businesses that manufacture, distribute and supply patients with orthopedic braces and artificial limbs—released the results of a study this week that says the number of Medicare patients receiving the medical equipment from noncertified personnel has not changed significantly even though the rules were tightened in 2000 and 2005.
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A rule that would require medical devices to be marked with unique identifiers is still stuck in the regulatory process, and the delay is drawing complaints from lawmakers and health systems.
Four House lawmakers sent a letter to the Office of Management and Budget, which has yet to release the final rule for the unique device identification system, urging OMB to provide a status update. It has been six years since Congress mandated the development of a device identification system.
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California supporters of capping damages in medical malpractice lawsuits have gained an unexpected ally—Planned Parenthood. And that organization is coming under fire for its position on the issue.
Kathy Kneer, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, said the state's pain-and-suffering cap has helped protect women's access to obstetricians. “To the extent we have a stable obstetrician provider pool, there is evidence it is working,” she said.
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California supporters of capping damages in medical malpractice lawsuits have gained an unexpected ally—Planned Parenthood. And that organization is coming under fire for its position on the issue.
Kathy Kneer, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, said the state's pain-and-suffering cap has helped protect women's access to obstetricians. “To the extent we have a stable obstetrician provider pool, there is evidence it is working,” she said.
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