Kevin MD has a post up featuring the top healthcare news of this Black Friday.
Story Number Two - from MedPage Today - cites a retrospective study done by Dr. Christopher Landrigan in Boston on iatrogenic (physician/system-caused) harm in hospitals - specifically North Carolina hospitals. The report was featured in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine:
A decade after the Institute of Medicine's report cataloging iatrogenic injury, harm resulting from medical care is still common with few signs of improvement . . .
Here's the part that got me laughing:
Landrigan and his colleagues retrospectively reviewed medical records from a random sample of 10 hospitals in North Carolina. That state was chosen because it has been highly involved in efforts to improve patient safety.
When I stopped laughing and started to seethe, I dropped a comment at Kevin's:
An observation from the trenches in the real world:
Regarding #2 – and the article’s comments about North Carolina being on the forefront of improving patient safety (sounds like a press release from the Medical Board), I had to laugh out loud.
It might be easier to get doctors to report medical mistakes and “sentinel events” and other bad doctors – if we were not professionally eviscerated (in my case by a “non-profit”) for doing it . . .
. . . AND IF, in North Carolina, we-who-have-been-eviscerated could get some substantive HELP from all those sanctimonious-regulatory-bodies-pontificating-about-patient-safety when we really need it.
Right now, in North Carolina, “non-profits” (particularly “non-profit hospitals”) suffer ZERO oversight of anything that they/their executives do . . . courtesy of a disinterested Secretary-of-State (Elaine Marshall – who just lost her bid to a U.S. Senator) and Attorney General (Roy Cooper).
It’s a black hole.
Meanwhile, just this week, our ex-Governor, Mike Easley (a man I begged for help) pled guilty to a FELONY after a two-year corruption probe.
Tell me again that North Carolina is at the forefront of anything but the manufacturing of sleaze.
Story Number 3 at Kevin's (on the safety of TSA scanners at airports) also caught my attention, simply because my brother is a commercial airline pilot.
He is working on this Thanksgiving holiday - as am I - so Big Sister called Little Brother on Thanksgiving eve. Ironically, he was at a hotel in Norfolk, just a hop, skip & jump from where I am working right now.
(With mirth in his voice): What do YOU want?
(Sweetly) "Hello Little Brother, I am concerned. How many times this month have you been felt up by a extraordinarily large man-in-black wearing latex gloves?
(Not printable.)
"Ouch. Well, Okie-dokie then. What about the unnecessary irradiation of your gonads?"
(Laughter. More unprintables.)
Happy Thanksgiving, readers. And safe travels.
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2 comments:
I did see on a clip from CNN of some sorta personal protest by a hot chick in a black bikini going through TSA at LAX. Getting to experience that first hand would be worth a latex grope, or a gonad nuke.
Then again maybe I'll just stay at home and watch it again on CNN.
She was more likely auditioning for "America's Got Talent".
Men.
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