Law enforcement officers have a legal right to remain with the patient during examination and emergency treatment. At the patient’s request, given his right to confidentiality, the officers can remove themselves from hearing range of the conversation. According to the American Medical Association, physicians should avoid situations in which the presence of an outside observer will influence medical intervention and compromise care.
A study by researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine says medical errors should rank as the third-leading cause of death in the United States — and highlights how shortcomings in tracking vital statistics may hinder research and keep the problem out of the public eye.
Shortage of primary-care providers, overfilled emergency rooms, a growing and aging population, and an increase in the number of people who have health insurance are among the drivers of this growth. Meanwhile, "the industry has gone through tremendous growth, primarily driven by increasing consumer demand for immediate treatment," said Steven Sellars, the newly elected president of the board of directors for the Urgent Care Association of America and CEO of Premier Health.
Blacks and Hispanics are less likely than whites to get flu vaccines, have a preventive health care visit, or receive follow-up care after being hospitalized for a mental health disorder, according to a first-of-its kind federal report that looks at health disparities among people on Medicare Advantage plans. “While these data do not tell us why differences exist, they show where we have problems and can help spur efforts to understand what can be done to reduce or eliminate these differences, ” said Dr. Cara James, director of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Office of Minority Health, which released the report.
More than 3 million such patients undergo a surgical procedure each year in the United States, and the costs of this care are soaring to the point where they have overtaken the costs of treating diabetes, heart attacks and new cancer diagnoses. Martin G. Paul, a doctor at Johns Hopkins Medicine who calls the issue a “looming catastrophe” says that annual costs are projected to climb to more than $40 billion by 2060, but that public health policy has been slow to address this issue partly because emergency general surgeries have been considered too difficult to characterize and measure.
The largely unfettered ability of surgeons with minimal expertise to perform high-risk procedures — particularly at hospitals that lack experience caring for significant numbers of patients — has been the subject of a contentious, long-running battle known as the volume-outcome debate.