Yes, there’s a lot going on these days.
Impeachment.
Potential war.
The 2020 election.
(Forget for a minute the cynic’s view that all three things might actually be the same.)
We’re forgetting or perhaps just distracted from drawing our readers’ attention to a preventable problem that kills some 200,000 people a year. Continue reading
Lisa McGiffert
Lisa McGiffert is best known by journalist, health provider organizations and regulatory agencies, as the former director of the Consumers Union Safe Patient Project, an effort sponsored by Consumer Reports magazine.
In my years of reporting on health, she always seemed to know exactly what was going on in my state regarding quality of care improvement efforts. If she didn’t, she knew who I should call. Continue reading
The ECRI Institute every so often comes out with top 10 lists, and on Monday it issued its latest, focusing on devices that cause harm.
Its Top 10 Health Technology Hazards is produced annually.
Here is a verbatim list: Continue reading
Today, Sept. 17, is the first World Patient Safety Day, declared by the World Health Organization to draw attention to ever-present need – still – to reduce avoidable patient harm in health care settings.
And November marks the 20th anniversary of “To Err is Human,” the National Academy of Medicine’s 1999 report that estimated as many as 98,000 people die a year in United States hospitals. That widely publicized report called for a national agenda to improve patient care processes to make it easier for honest providers to safely treat patients and harder for them to cause harm. Continue reading
Photo: Roger Mommaerts via Flickr
Hospitals and health systems are jumping into artificial intelligence (AI) in an effort to help physicians better analyze images and other clinical data. But reporters should be careful about overstating the value that these new tools can bring to clinical decision-making.
Radiology is the medical specialty probably most associated with AI today because of the tantalizing possibility that computers could help radiologists read images more quickly, enabling earlier diagnoses and treatment.
