Patient Safety
Communication Failures Linked to 1,744 Deaths in Five Years
By MELISSA BAILEY, for STAT. Hospitals and doctors’ offices nationwide might have avoided nearly 2,000 patient deaths — and $1.7 billion in malpractice costs — if medical staff and patients communicated better, a report released… Read More
Grants to Duke Suspended Amid Concern for Patient Safety
By Ivan Oransky, MD for Medscape Medical News. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) last year suspended seven grants to Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, “to assure the welfare and safety of research… Read More
Sophisticated Health Care Marketing Campaigns Dangerous for Consumers
Health Care Industry Spends $30B A Year Pushing Its Wares, From Drugs To Stem Cell Treatment By Liz Szabo, Kaiser Health News. Hoping to earn its share of the $3.5 trillion health care market, the… Read More
Elite Hospitals Plunge Into Unproven Stem Cell Treatments
Hospitals are exploiting desperate patients by marketing controversial stem cell procedures without any proven benefits. By Liz Szabo, Kaiser Health News. The six-minute segment in an online video mimics a morning talk show, using a… Read More
Big Pharma Pays Thousands of Bad Docs
How Pharmaceutical Industry Dollars Reach Your Doctors. By Mike Tigas, Ryann Grochowski Jones, Charles Ornstein, and Lena Groeger, ProPublica. Drug companies spend $30 billion annually on marketing. More than $2 billion in payments to doctors, other medical providers and...
25 Cities Where You Don’t Want to Get Sick
By Thomas C. Frohlich, 247wallst.com. 25. Sierra Vista-Douglas, AZ > 30 day readmission rate:16.4% (highest 10%) > 30 day mortality rate:13.3% > Preventable hospitalizations: 48.6 per 1,000 patients > No. of physicians: 46.7 per 100,000 (lowest 10%)...
The Biggest Mistakes Doctors Make
Misdiagnoses are harmful and costly. But they’re often preventable. A patient with abdominal pain dies from a ruptured appendix after a doctor fails to do a complete physical exam. A biopsy comes back positive for...
Surgery to Avoid
By Nicholas Bakalkar, The New York Times. Even Minor Procedures Come With Major Risks The four operations discussed below are often over performed. Some are moneymakers for doctors and hospitals, others are expedient and still...
Medical Secrets
By J. Klein, for APRA. Hospitals Everyone who seeks treatment at a hospital emergency room or an urgent care center associated with a hospital in America risks unnecessary admission, financial ruin and even death. Preventable...