Tampa (FL) General Hospital is conducting an internal investigation after staff members mistakenly started performing a cardiac catheterization on the wrong patient. The man was not harmed, but staff members failed to follow proper hospital policies to identify the patient before the procedure, said hospital representatives. Those who made the mistake "will be subject to the appropriate disciplinary actions," the hospital said in a statement. In announcing the error, Tampa General joined an increasing number of hospitals who choose to apologize for mistakes rather than deny them.
A Fayette County woman has filed a suit against Charleston Area Medical Center, claiming she was fired because she raised concerns over patient safety issues. Zeda Fox, who was employed by CAMC for about a year before being fired in February, claims she was fired because she had repeatedly raised patient safety concerns, particularly those related to understaffing of nurses. According to the lawsuit, the firing constitutes "unlawful retaliatory discharge."
Deaths and hospital stays from a drug-resistant intestinal superbug almost doubled in recent years, according to a report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study found that the death rate from the dangerous germ rose to 2.3% in 2004, from 1.2% in 2000. Additionally, the number of Americans hospitalized with the disease grew to 291,000 in 2005 from 134,000 in 2000.
A bill that passed the state Senate this week would require California hospitals to step up prevention of drug-resistant infections, requiring that hospitals report new infections to the California Department of Public Health. The bill also requires that hospitals clean and disinfect a variety of sites, ranging from television consoles and telephones to cardiac monitors and feeding pumps, all of which are capable of carrying drug-resistant bacteria that can subsequently spread to other patients.
A Commonwealth Fund report examines how states perform on 13 different indicators in five categories: access to care, quality of care, cost, potential to lead healthy and productive lives, and equity in the quality of care provided regardless of race, income, or insurance status. It ranked states within each category and then assigned states a final overall ranking. Some say the findings show a need for a larger federal role in setting minimum standards to encourage better coverage and care for children.
All Ontario, Canada, hospitals will have to start reporting on the number of cases they have of the potentially deadly C. difficile bacteria starting Sept. 30. Critics claim Ontario was too slow to come up with a plan to deal with C. difficile after it claimed 2,000lives in Quebec in 2003, and insist some of the 260 deaths reported so far in seven Ontario hospitals could have been prevented. They also say the public has a right to know the extent of the C. difficile outbreak in all 157 hospitals in the province.