Two recent papers have prompted me to ask myself the question, “Why do malpractice suits take so long to be resolved?” One was by a group from Harvard, USC and the RAND Corporation. They looked at more than 10,000 closed...
Read MoreAs new Medicare rules kick in, some 2,200 hospitals nationwide are facing financial penalties for 30-day readmission rates for myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure and pneumonia. Medicare payments will be lowered by...
Read MoreThe September 2012 issue of the AARP Bulletin has a story about a woman who sued an elder-law attorney for legal malpractice. Bear with me. It’s an interesting tale. In 2004, a man consulted an elder-law attorney to set up a...
Read MoreIf you pay attention at all to news about medicine, you must have heard about the tragic death of a 12-year-old boy who was seen and discharged from the emergency department of the prestigious New York University Medical Center....
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Doctors and nurses in the ICU at Long Island’s North Shore University Hospital are being watched...
Read MoreYou are probably familiar with the CMS “never events” initiative. CMS has decided it will not reimburse hospitals for treatment related to complications that it says should never occur. Here is the current list. Foreign object...
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There is much hand-wringing about the shortage of primary care physicians. But primary care is not...
Read MoreNot long ago, I attended a retirement party for a former colleague. He had been a surgeon for 43 years at a hospital where I was once chairman of surgery. A number of old friends and colleagues whom I hadn’t seen for a long time...
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Here’s a little story from the early days of my first job as a chairman of surgery. Shortly after...
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A paper reporting the results of a survey of women surgeons on the topic of pregnancy appears in...
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“Collateral damage: the effect of patient complications on the surgeon’s psyche”...
Read MoreApparently a few years ago someone decreed that “non-compliant” was no longer a politically correct term to describe patients who did not take their medicines or follow instructions. The newspeak to use is now “non-adherent.”...
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Let’s talk about proton pump inhibitors (PPIs). These drugs, successors to the innovative H2...
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Here is an extreme “system error” type of response to an event that seems to have been a human...
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A recent survey from staffing company Jackson Healthcare found that 68% of physicians gave the...
Read MoreIt’s 8:15 p.m. I am at home. My beeper goes off, and I check it instantly. It reads, “555-1212” [Number changed to comply with HIPAA regulations]. It’s the inpatient surgical floor. Within 10 seconds, I have dialed the number....
Read MoreRichard Smith, a former editor of the British Medical Journal, wrote a thoughtful essay offering guidance for new medical students. (Full text here.) Although it was published in 2003, someone just brought it to my attention via...
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If you wonder why hospitals are under fire for outrageous and often baffling accounting practices,...
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