Posts Tagged ‘ Veterans Hospital ’

Post-Op News You Don’t Want: Oops! Hospital Errors Still Happening

November 17th, 2010. By LucyC

Stories about hospital screw-ups and medical malpractice suits—you know, mistakes that nearly cost someone his life—are typically good coffee break fodder and undoubtedly the stuff of urban legend. However, I came across this news story today and it was a bit of a wake-up call. According to a report by United Press International, 12 California hospitals were recently fined between $25,000 and $75,000 each “for medical errors that caused, or were likely to cause, injury or death.” Twelve hospitals. 

One of the facilities that screwed up and got caught, according to officials with California’s Department of Public Health, is Southwest Healthcare System in Murrieta, CA. They were fined $25,000 for leaving a surgical instrument—”a metal device roughly 10 inches long and 2 inches wide used to hold tissue during surgery—inside a woman who had a baby in 2008.” I’m going to assume that that means the surgical team left the device inside the woman following her Caesarean section. Nobody noticed until the woman complained of pain. So she underwent exploratory surgery and the instrument was found. Apparently the report that was written about the incident listed one of the possible reasons for the mistake as unfamiliarity between the two doctors who were operating—meaning the docs didn’t know each other. Isn’t that why procedures were developed?

Again, to cite the UPI story, this particular facility has been fined by the state seven times. And, Southwest Healthcare System is not alone in its stunning lack of adherence to procedure: California Pacific Medical Center, Pacific Campus Hospital, San Francisco, was fined $50,000 and $75,000 for negligence involving two different patients; Citrus Valley Medical Center in Covina, Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Hospital Error, medical malpractice, Veterans Hospital, veterans medical malpractice
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