Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Looking At Causes of Medical Errors and How to Fix

Nashville, TN (PRWEB) December 11, 2008 — Administrators of healthcare agencies are no-doubt familiar with the Institute of Medicine's much publicized report, To Err Is Human; Building a Safer Health System, which found that preventable medical errors account for at least 44,000 and possibly as high as 98,000 deaths each year. Additionally, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) estimates that over 770,000 people are injured or die each year from medication errors, costing providers millions of dollars in unrecoverable expenses. Research also shows that "the majority of medical errors do not result from individual recklessness, but rather by faulty systems, manual archaic processes, and the lack of congruent or compatible information systems."

A free white paper, from eTransX, delves deeper into these issues and explains the practices, methodologies, and technologies required to effectively manage the four stages of an holistic approach to the management of the entire life cycle of healthcare data:

Monday, December 10, 2007

Massachusetts Supreme Court Says Doctor's Liability Goes Beyond Patient

From The Boston Globe today: "BOSTON — A doctor who failed to warn his patient about the potential side effects of medication can be held liable for the man's car crash that killed a 10-year-old boy, the state's highest court ruled Monday in the first such decision to make doctors responsible for harm to nonpatients." Read full article here.