Technology Hazards in Hospitals and Surgery Centers
Gene Moen
December 10, 2014
Technology has the potential to improve health care, but it also carries with it a number of risks to patient safety.
Technology has the potential to improve health care, but it also carries with it a number of risks to patient safety.
Ambulatory Surgical Centers (ASCs) are a relatively new phenomenon. While there can be some benefit to having a surgical procedure at an ASC, there are good reasons to be careful, not the least of which is that surgeons and anesthesiologists often have a strong financial interest in performing your surgery there, when it may not be the safest choice for you.
A recent California lawsuit alleges that orthopedic surgeons used "knock-off" spine hardware in surgeries. Much of the hardware failed, causing patients serious medical issues, while the surgeons, clinics and machine shop fabricating the hardware apparently reaped thousands of dollars in profits from using the counterfeit products.
It is a common misconception that doctors lose their licenses when they settle malpractice claims with injured patients. The truth is doctors continue to practice, sometimes after settling many claims.
Because it’s often impossible to properly assess a medical malpractice claim without knowing what the long term damages are, typically it is premature to involve an attorney until the injured person is "fixed and stable," and not still recovering.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have quietly stopped reporting some serious medical conditions to the public.
Age may be a factor in some surgical malpractice claims, but age alone isn’t nearly enough to bring a successful claim. There are plenty of excellent surgeons out there still practicing into their 70s and beyond.
The new wearable computer may make operations safer, but it also has the potential for problems, not only surgically but in safekeeping patient’s private medical information
In the last several years, there has been a huge increase in the number of surgeries performed with robotic devices, usually manufactured by one company that has aggressively marketed them to doctors and hospitals.
Medical malpractice attorneys know that it is often very difficult to determine what went wrong in a surgical procedure. Unless someone witnessed exactly what happened and is willing to testify about it, or unless the outcome was so bad it is presumed to be the result of negligence (a res ipsa loquitur claim, such as leaving a surgical instrument in the patient), the reasons for a bad outcome are often never known to the patient or his/her attorney.