Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Diagnostic errors are one of the "new" hot topics in the healthcare field. A new study from British Medical Journal of Quality and Safety has a chilling estimate of just how common diagnostic errors are occurring in outpatient settings.
So what's your guess? How often in the US are diagnostic errors being made in outpatient settings?
- about 1 in 5 visits
- about 1 in 10 visits
- about 1 in 20 visits
- about 1 in 50 visits
- about 1 in 100 visits
The study's conclusion, after the jump...
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
As many of you know, the FDA has issued new draft guidelines about Blood Glucose Monitoring Test Systems for Industry and Manufacturers.
Recently, the AACC held an excellent webinar where an Dr. Courtney Lias, PhD from the FDA discussed the intentions of the new guidances and then fielded a LOT of questions. I don't want to step on what Dr. Lias and the AACC accomplished during their webinar. There was useful information in that presentation and I encourage others to consider getting those materials once they become available on the AACC website.
However, while reading through the guidances and talking to laboratories these past few months, I thought I might share a few observations...
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Posted by Sten Westgard, MS [with apologies in advance*]
Take the "Low QC" Quiz to see if your laboratory is suffering from this new condition...
- Do you have a decrease in your desire to QC?
- Do you have a general lack of energy at work caused by QC?
- Have you noticed a decrease in your enjoyment of life, possibly due to QC?
- Are you sad and/or grumpy about QC?
- Has there been a recent deterioration in your ability to trouble-shoot QC?
Answers, after the jump...
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Laboratories in the US probably already know this: their healthcare institutions are getting hit with fines from CMS due to excessive 30-day readmission rates for three conditions:
- (AMI) Acute myocardial infarction
- (HF) Heart Failure
- Pneumonia patients
CMS is imposing increasing fines for hospitals that have excessive readmissions. Guess how many hospitals have been fined - and how much money they've had to pay back...
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Recall back in July we mentioned a raffle for a "Westgard Rules" Bobble-head?
Well, the Bobble-heads took a bit longer to arrive (that boat from China is slower than we thought), so we can now announce the winners...
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
It's almost mandatory that any presentation or report discussing patient safety references the landmark IOM report of 2000: To Err is Human - Building a Safer Health System. The takeaway quote from this report is that US hospitals were causing 44,000 to 98,000 deaths that were otherwise preventable. That is, hospitals were causing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.
A recent paper has attempted to revise that estimate, focusing on Preventable Adverse Events (PAEs) that contributed to the death of patients. Can you guess how lethal US hospitals are now?
- 4,000 to 10,000 PAEs per year
- 44,000 to 98,0000 PAEs per year
- 100,000 to 200,000 PAEs per year
- 210,000 to 440,000 PAEs per year
The answer, after the jump...
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
A lot of interesting studies coming out this month, unfortunately none of them with encouraging news about the US healthcare system.
The latest, from Sunil Eappen, MD, Atul Gawande, MD et al, Relationship Between Occurence of Surgical Complications and Hospital Finances, JAMA, April 17, 2013, Vol. 309, No. 15 1599-1606
Take a guess: do US hospitals make more money when things go wrong, or less?
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
There was some very interesting testimony given in front of the US Congress this week. Boeing and other FAA officials discussed their failure to adequately test the lithium-ion batteries found in the 787 Dreamliner. As you probably already know, on two of the Dreamliners, those batteries malfunctioned and caused fires, which then caused the entire fleet to be grounded.
In the New York Times, it was reported "Boeing’s chief engineer on the 787, Mike Sinnett, said the calculation that a battery would fail only once every 10 million flight hours applied to the design of the battery and did not include possible manufacturing flaws."
In fact, two battery failures and serious fires occurred after less than 52,000 flight hours. The risk was actually over 350 times higher than their estimate!
How could they be so wrong? More after the jump...
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Can you guess which of these categories is the leading source of successful malpractice claims?
- Surgical mishaps
- Obstetrical problems
- Medication errors
- Anesthesia disasters
- Diagnostic errors
- Treatment errors
- Something else entirely?
The answer, after the jump...
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Dr. Westgard had the pleasure of taking part in the Bio-Rad industry workshop on July 17th, which was focused on Quality Control for the Future - Risk Management EP23 for Laboratories.
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
A recent New York Times Sunday editorial focused on the deplorable state of medical device regulation. We simply can no longer trust FDA clearances, particularly 510ks: