KHN: Without proper monitoring, #contaminated #medicine makes patients sicker

By Sydney Lupkin, Kaiser Health News Photos by Heidi de Marco ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Despite the jackhammer-like rhythm of a mechanical ventilator, Alicia Moreno had dozed off in a chair by her 1-year-old’s hospital bed, when a doctor woke her with some bad news: The common stool softener her son, Anderson, was given months …

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Boston health interviews: Spotlight on surgery, Lown and Berwick

You correspondent has been tooling around the city lately asking a lot of questions. Three recent Q&A column in Health Leaders with Boston, Brookline and Cambridge, Mass. links. Also, the staff at the Brigham had a few questions when a VIP guest make some special requests. Check out the story from the Sunday Globe When …

Compare Massachusetts doctors via quality reports and patient feedback

Searching for health care services on the Internet can be like searching info about food, hotels or pets. You have to sort through a lot of low quality or scraped sites that don't offer much. Healthcare Compass looks like a good destination for Bay Staters. On this website, there are two different ways to compare …

Health Leaders Media: What hospitals learned from the Boston Marathon Bombing

From Health Leaders Media A year after the two bombs went off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring scores, the city is making final preparations for the 2014 marathon on Monday, April 21.  First responders and healthcare workers in particular have learned a number of lessons from the events …

A primer on using data to stay healthy and get well

  How do you choose a new doctor or a nursing home? Get information on toxins in your neighborhood.? Search an index of reliable, up-to-date medical findings? Ask friends, do a web search or brave an impenetrable government database?  The HealthDecider data links to the left are designed to help. Most are national, but some …

Best in the biz in new book on medical errors

We’re saps for top ten lists, even though we find the gimmick annoying. But, we are big fans of Joe and Terry Graedon. We’ve been following both the print and radio versions of “The People’s Pharmacy” since our days in the NC’s Research Triangle. They offer solid advice about meds and also know the difference …

‘Fessing up to medical errors

In the old days, hospitals were not allowed to admit medical errors to patients and families. Today, at some hospitals, that has changed. Today's Globe story on a lawsuit over a fatal overdose of blood thinner contains this statement from Mass General. A spokeswoman for Massachusetts General Hospital said in a statement yesterday that the hospital regrets …

Hoping every week is patient safety week

Here at BHN, we don't go much for National... Fill in the Blank...Week. But, we offer this video on patient safety by the Boston-based National Patients Safety Foundation anyway.

Mapping improvements in care

Mapping improvement in care? CMS director Don Berwick's former employer, so to speak, The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) is marking the first anniversaryof its interactive quality-of-care map with a series of videos and conference calls.  The site itself, which free, is not free of health policy jargon-- forgivable since it's targeted at a wonk audience. Here's a translation. The …

New info lets patients, researchers compare quality at hospitals nationwide

Check out your own hospital or compare it to others. The updated information on Hospital Compare includes data on the rates of outpatient MRIs for low back pain, outpatient re-tests after a screening mammogram, as well as two ratios that explain how frequently outpatient departments gave patients "double" computed tomography (CT) scans when a single scan …