Fighting the fake drug menace is like playing whack-a-mole. It is technically illegal for individuals to order drugs online from other countries. And yet no sooner does the F.D.A. shut down one dubious online pharmacy than another pops up. According to the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, only 3 percent of the 9,600 online pharmacies it has reviewed complied with industry standards. Many were based overseas, so their sales to Americans were illegal; others did not require doctors' prescriptions. And some were very likely peddling dangerous counterfeit drugs.
Health officials cited three Massachusetts hospitals in the past six months for wrongly sending away patients from their emergency rooms, in one case resulting in the death of a patient while en route to another facility. Flagrant or repeat violators risk losing their right to treat Medicare and Medicaid patients, which can cost a hospital millions of dollars. Charlton, St. Vincent, and Lahey Clinic in Burlington—which turned away an emergency room patient in November—have been told they will not lose their Medicare contracts, but they could be fined. Federal officials said it is unusual to have three cases in such a short span.
In a new survey of cancer patients, many people who'd had problems with their treatment never said anything to the doctor they thought was responsible—and almost none formally reported the problems to the hospital. Patients cited delays in treatment, surgical complications and other issues related to medical care, in addition to communication barriers or breakdowns between them and their doctors, as the most common potentially harmful problems. Almost all cancer patients said that the problems with their doctor, whether communication-related or medical, had resulted in psychological harms, such as anger, fear and distress.
Having professional translators in the emergency room for non-English-speaking patients might help limit potentially dangerous miscommunication, a new study suggests. The study, done at two pediatric ERs, found that when Spanish-speaking families had access to a professional interpreter, 12 percent of translation slips—such as adding or omitting certain words and phrases—could have had "clinical consequences," like giving a wrong medication dose. But mistakes like that were about twice as likely if there was no interpreter or if the translator was an amateur, like a family member or a bilingual member of the hospital staff.
Seven Massachusetts hospitals plan to offer patients harmed by medical errors a prompt apology and financial settlements before they resort to lawsuits. A coalition of physician, hospital, and patient groups planned to release details Wednesday of the initiative, called "Road Map to Reform," which they predict will increase reporting of medical mistakes and cut down on lengthy litigation that drives up health care costs and fuels distrust between caregivers and patients. The plan calls on doctors and nurses to fully disclose mistakes to patients and apologize. Three large insurers and a medical group have donated about $1 million to underwrite the initial work.
In a study published this year in the journal Health Services Research, researchers analyzed the results of the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems, or Hcahps (pronounced "H-caps").The survey consists of 27 questions about topics ranging from communication with nurses and doctors and responsiveness of hospital staff to general cleanliness and noise levels. When the researchers divided the questionnaire results by the patients' sex, they discovered that men tended to be more positive over all about their hospital experiences.