A mediation program spearheaded by Gov. John Kitzhaber went into effect Tuesday, giving patients and their families an option besides suing when medical errors happen. But questions remain over how the mediation program will develop, including whether hospitals, doctors and other providers will take advantage of the program, or candidly discuss errors if they do. The result of a compromise between trial lawyers and the Oregon Medical Association approved in SB 483 last year, the Early Discussion and Resolution program is intended to cut down on lawsuits and boost the reporting of medical errors to help improve health care practices.
The director of Roudebush Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Indianapolis said Tuesday the facility has reduced its patient wait times by two thirds. That assertion came during a visit from Indiana congresswomen Susan Brooks and Jackie Walorski. The representatives were taking a tour of the medical center in response to concerns about long patient wait times, falsified records and preventable deaths at VA facilities across the country. Tom Mattice, director of the 229-bed hospital just west of Downtown, said the facility has made important strides in reducing wait times.
Gov. Martin O'Malley's intervention in the wage fight between Johns Hopkins Hospital and its service workers reflects the lingering dispute's significance but also signals that it may be resolved soon. The hospital and members of the 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East labor union, which represents 2,000 Hopkins workers, went back to the bargaining table Tuesday after the governor asked them to take a cooling-off period. Union leaders also called off a four-day strike that was to have begun Friday. It would have been the second strike in the dispute. Workers walked off the job for three days in late April after negotiations for a new contract broke down. Talks began in March and have continued intermittently.
Ever since the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) decided to penalize hospitals financially for avoidable readmission of patients within 30 days of their discharge, health systems have been coming up with inventive ways to keep patients out of the hospital while also trying to bring in more revenue. Most of these approaches make sense. They've created population health management programs that analyze patient data to spot those at high risk for readmission, for instance, and then offer preventive measures to those patients. They've created care-coordination systems to make sure discharged patients arrive safely at their next destination, whether it be their home, a rehabilitation unit, or a nursing facility.
Massachusetts courts routinely fail to report doctors facing criminal charges to the board that oversees physician discipline, sometimes leaving regulators and the public in the dark, a state audit released Tuesday found. State courts reported just two doctors to the Board of Registration in Medicine between 2002 and 2012, the audit found. But when state Auditor Suzanne Bump's staff searched criminal records, it found 84 active physicians during the same period with felony or serious misdemeanor convictions, or "continuations without a finding.'' The law requires the courts to report all such cases to the medical board, which considers whether they warrant board action and, in certain instances, posts the information on its website.
A Lehigh County jury today found that St. Luke's University Hospital should not have sued the families of two patients who died at the facility when serial killer Charles Cullen worked there. Cullen is serving consecutive life sentences in New Jersey after admitting he killed at least 29 people in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In 2004, family members of two former patients who died at the hospital in Fountain Hill filed malpractice suits against St. Luke's. Harry Miller sued on behalf of Regina Miller, and Robert and Leslie Hall sued on behalf of Marilyn Hall. The suits claimed Cullen murdered those clients during his tenure at St. Luke's, between 2000 and 2002.