Most drug interactions are easy to anticipate, especially when your doctor has an up-to-date list of your current medications. Patients are required to fill out certain medical forms, answer health questions and list current medications they’re taking whenever they see a doctor. Depending on how often you visit the doctor…
The experts say you shouldn’t drive a car without a full eight hours of sleep. Would you perform a medical procedure? The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), an organization that oversees residency requirements for doctors in training has suggested changing the maximum shift from 16 hours to 28…
How hospitals act when it comes to medical devices matters greatly. This includes what a hospital does after injuries or deaths occur in relation to such a device at the hospital. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration puts reporting requirements on hospitals when it comes to such incidents. Among these…
The death of Lavern’s Law saved hospitals and insurers a lot of money. Should that money go to a senator who helped kill it? This post is not a political endorsement. It is meant to call attention to the forces that affect victims of medical malpractice. Earlier this year, New…
Medication errors can come about in many different ways. Sometimes, they happen as a result of mistakes made at pharmacies. Customers trust that pharmacies will get everything right when filling their prescription. Unfortunately, sometimes, this doesn’t happen. Incidents occasionally occur in which a pharmacist makes a mistake, such as a…
A misdiagnosis can have many negative effects on a patient. One is a patient getting treatment for a condition they don’t actually have. Such unnecessary treatments can be problematic, particularly if they carry risks of severe side effects. One medical condition that has treatments that can have major side effects…
When receiving a treatment that a doctor recommended, patients generally trust that the treatment is one that actually has the potential to help them with their particular medical condition. Unnecessary treatments can have negative consequences for patients, as some treatments can have risks associated with them that patients would be…
Last time, we began looking at the positive trend of increasing transparency in the delivery of health care. There are a variety of positive changes that will come about as the result of increased transparency in health care, particularly when medical error ends up harming a patient. Unfortunately, in many…
We don’t need to debate the merits of a for-profit medical system today, other than to say that that’s exactly what we have in this country right now. As a result, the profit drives all of the decision making, and that can lead to some horrible mistakes or some sub-standard…
In our previous post, we looked at the VA’s recent admission that it failed to provide qualified professionals to conduct proper screening for traumatic brain injury on thousands of patients. As we noted, such a failure would ordinarily be considered grounds for liability were it not for the fact that…