Amid increasing anxieties over the rising cost of healthcare, and the contentious debates in particular surrounding a potential Medicare overhaul, a new nationwide poll from Suffolk University's Political Research Center is believed to be the first to directly link healthcare spending for seniors with end-of-life choices. The researchers were surprised at what they found. Thirty-five percent of the 1,070 likely voters queried last month said they would favor allowing "mentally able seniors" to end their own lives in an effort to "help save health care costs." "The wording of the question directly links the economic piece to end-of-life, so I thought there would be various slices of no's that outweighed the yeses," said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center. Men were much more likely than women to say yes, as were people under 65, and those with higher incomes and education levels. Among those least likely to favor allowing seniors to end their lives in order to save health care costs were Republicans, and those who live in the South and Midwest.
Three patients at the Texas Back Institute in the Dallas suburb of Plano have died during what prosecutors later called an illegal clinical trial of a bone cement promoted by Synthes Inc., the medical device maker near West Chester, PA, and its wholly owned subsidiary Norian Inc. between May 2002 and fall 2004. Pharmaceutical executives rarely get jail time for corporate crimes, but federal prosecutors in Philadelphia this week will argue for sentencing guidelines that could mean up to a year in prison for four former Synthes executives in connection with the illegal testing and marketing of Norian bone cement. Synthes and Norian hoped to profit from the spinal surgery market created by millions of older Americans with back pain. Court documents show that former Synthes board member and spine surgeon Ken Lambert referred to the trials in e-mails to company leaders as "human experimentation whose only defense seems to be that it will be a small study."
Perhaps the most significant sign that opinion has shifted on whether patients can be trusted with information about Nevada hospitals' safety records: The Nevada Hospital Association and Nevada State Medical Association supported bills requiring such disclosure during the 2011 Legislature. Nevada's health care community "knows it's a national trend. They know that it was coming," said Bill Welch, CEO of the Hospital Association. Indeed, bills that have passed or are likely to pass the 2011 Legislature will give consumers better information to use in selecting hospitals by giving them access to the facilities' rates of preventable infections and other harm, safety advocates say. Once consumers begin to choose hospitals based on safety performance, it will create competition to improve their safety records, state Sen. Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, said.
Polytrauma Rehabilitation Center at the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Palo Alto, CA is one of four VA centers nationwide staffed and equipped specifically to treat the most grievously wounded U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq. The centers have become a key element in caring for the wounded as the war in Afghanistan enters its second decade and the injured from Iraq continue to need care. They are the result of important medical insights gleaned from the long wars in the Middle East — that modern battlefield injuries, particularly those from bomb blasts, require a team approach from physicians and therapists. The number of troops suffering amputations and other catastrophic injuries is increasing as the U.S. counter-insurgency strategy requires them to leave the protection of heavily armored vehicles and do more foot patrols to help win support from Afghan civilians.
Several Central Florida hospitals were among the worst in the state for life-threatening infections and conditions related to patient stays, according to recently released data from the federal government. Many had rates for falls, blood infections, even bedsores that were several times the national average. Orlando Health, for instance, had the highest rate of life-threatening blood infections in the state of Florida: four times the national average. Officials at Orlando Health contested the data and on May 27 sent their complaints to Medicare administrators. Because Orlando Health's five hospitals include the area's only Level One trauma center, hospital officials say their system receives more traumatic — and complicated — cases than other local hospitals. Those cases are more likely to require catheters and lengthy hospital stays, hospital officials said. In addition, Orlando Health officials complained that Medicare based its figures on billing codes, which staff can enter incorrectly — for example, mistaking inflammatory cellulitis for the more serious infectious cellulitis.
At least 34 patients died as a result of preventable mistakes in Oregon hospitals last year, the same number reported in 2009 to the Oregon Patient Safety Commission. While the number is small in comparison to the tens of thousands of people safely restored to health in hospitals each year, it is one of several indicators of stalled progress in reducing serious medical errors. In each of the past two years, for instance, Oregon hospitals reported 10 wrong site, wrong patient, or wrong procedure errors. Surgical teams accidentally left objects in patients 21 times in 2009 and 18 times in 2010, despite the commission setting a target of eliminating this type of error. "The truth is, the culture of patient safety is not where it needs to be," said Bethany Higgins, administrator of the Oregon Patient Safety Commission. Created by the Legislature in 2003, the commission represents a collaborative effort between the state and the health care industry to stop medical errors. Fifty-six of Oregon's 58 hospitals are participating in the voluntary program, along with about half the surgery centers and three-quarters of the nursing homes in Oregon.