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You may say that things aren’t what they used to be. Finding a doctor isn’t what it used to be either. You probably aren’t going to receive your care from your parent’s primary care doctor. You also may need care from specialist from time to time. So how do you […]

WUNC aired a story about a pilot project in western North Carolina that seeks to reduce medical errors through anonymous reporting when a medical provider makes a mistake. This keeps the focus where it should be: patient safety. With all the talk about tort reform in the recent health care […]

Multi-drug resistant organisms are invading our hospitals. To counter this threat medical in-patient medical facilities use contact precautions such as isolation of the patient, gowning, gloving and masking are used to prevent patient-to-patient spread of drug resistant infections such as MRSA, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. However such precautions have their own […]

Dr. Martin Makary, M.D., a professor of surgery and public health at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore reported, stated in a CNN article that catatrosphic surgical errors are more common that the pubic thinks. The problem is commonly referred to as wrong patient wrong site surgery. The findings arise from […]

Reporting medical errors protects the public in many ways. Despite laws that require medical providers to report medical errors, they frequently choose not to comply. Washington State is one of 27 states which require reporting of serious medical errors but it frequently fails to enforce adequate reporting. Reporting requirement are […]

A new study published in an international medical journal confirms that laboring mothers who receive sub-standard medical care are three times more likely to have babies who have suffered an inadequate supply of oxygen, a cause of brain injury. The study found that if there was sub-standard care during the […]

Last week, the Supreme Court of Georgia declared that a recently-enacted state law capping noneconomic damages violated the right to jury trial bestowed by the Georgia Constitution. The Atlanta Journal Constitution covered the decision in this article called, ‘State high court overturns state’s tort reform’. In 2005, the Georgia legislature […]

A new Public Citizen report shows that while medical malpractice payments are at near-record lows, health care costs continue to rise. You can read about the report on Public Citizen’s website. This makes one thing clear: claims that medical malpractice lawsuits are driving the high costs of health care are […]

While I was visiting a neurosurgeon’s office in the recent past, he took the occasion to show me all the medical charts he was reviewing for medical negligence. As I gazed upon the many stacks of medical records, he asked me why there were so many medical malpractice lawsuits. When […]

According to a recent study reported in the New York Daily News as many as 48,000 people die each year from pneumonia and blood borne infections (sepsis) acquired in our nation’s hospitals. Investigators reviewed hospital discharge records from as many as 69 million in-patient hospital admissions between 1998 and 2006, […]