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THIS WEEK'S EDITION:
- Sorry Works! on CBS Early Show - tomorrow! (8-8:30 EST)
- Woman told by hospital to sue to get information
- Pediatricians want to disclose
- Reminder on Chicago Patient Safety Forum's Annual Meeting/Disclosure Panel
SORRY WORKS! ON CBS EARLY SHOW - TOMORROW! (8-8:30 EST)
Sorry Works! will be featured on the CBS Early Show tomorrow, Wednesday, February 7th with Dr. Emily Senay.
Dr. Rick Van Pelt, Linda Kenney of MITSS, Jim Saxton, med-mal defense attorney from Stevens & Lee, and Doug Wojcieszak, Sorry Works! founder & spokesperson, will be featured in the segment.
The segment will run sometime between 8 to 8:30am EST. Be sure to tune in!
WOMAN TOLD BY HOSPITAL TO SUE TO GET INFORMATION
Read the article below and file it under, "And you wonder why there's a med-mal crisis?!!"
WFTV.com ( Florida ) Woman Wants Answers After Hospital Amputates Her Limbs
Woman Becomes Quadruple Amputee After Giving Birth
January 20, 2006
ORLANDO , Fla. -- A Sanford mother says she will never be able to hold her newborn because an Orlando hospital performed a life- altering surgery and, she claims, the hospital refuses to explain why they left her as a multiple amputee.
The woman filed a complaint against Orlando Regional Healthcare Systems, she said, because they won't tell her exactly what happened. The hospital maintains the woman wants to know information that would violate other patients' rights.
Claudia Mejia gave birth eight and a half months ago at Orlando Regional South Seminole. She was transported to Orlando Regional Medical Center in Orlando where her arms and legs were amputated. She was told she had streptococcus, a flesh eating bacteria, and toxic shock syndrome, but no further explanation was given.
The hospital, in a letter, wrote that if she wanted to find out exactly what happened, she would have to sue them.
"I want to know what happened. I went to deliver my baby and I came out like this," Mejia said.
Mejia said after she gave birth to Mathew last spring, she was kept in the hospital with complications. Twelve days after giving birth at Orlando Regional South Seminole hospital, she was transported to Orlando Regional Medical Center where she became a quadruple amputee. Now she can not care for or hold her baby.
"Yeah, I want to pick him up. He wants me to pick him up. I can't. I want to, but I can't," she said. "Woke up from surgery and I had no arms and no legs. No one told me anything. My arms and legs were just gone."
Her 7-year-old son, Jorge, asks his mother over and over what happened to her. Neither she nor her husband has the answer.
"I love her, so I'll always stick with her and take it a day at a time myself," said her husband, Tim Edwards.
The couple wants to know how she caught streptococcus, during labor or after. She doesn't know. She knows she didn't leave the hospital the same.
"And why, I want to know why this happened," she said.
Her attorney, Judy Hyman wrote ORHS a letter saying, according to the Florida statute, "The Patients Right To Know About Adverse Medical Incidents Act," the hospital must give her the records.
"When the statute is named 'Patients Right To Know,' I don't know how it could be clearer," Hyman said.
The hospital's lawyers wrote back, "Ms. Mejia's request may require legal resolution." In other words, according to their interpretation of the law, Mejia has to sue them to get information about herself.
That's the sticking point, the interpretation of the Patients Right To Know act, a constitutional amendment Florida voters passed a little more than a year ago.
Mejia's other attorney, E. Clay Parker, said the hospital is not following the law
"We were forced to file this and ask a judge to interpret the constitutional amendment and do right," Parker said.
Mejia hopes the right thing is done. She said not knowing exactly why it happened is unbearable. She only hopes she'll be able to soon answer her little boy's question, 'What happened?'
"He told me everyday, 'What happened,' and I don't have any answers for that," she said.
ORMC said Mejia is requesting information on if there were other patients or someone on her floor with the streptococcus. They said, if they release that to her, that would be a violation of other patients' rights.
PEDIATRICIANS WANT TO DISCLOSE
This press release below was publically distributed. Interesting information.
5-Feb-2007
Contact: Jim Dryden
314-286-0110
JAMA and Archives Journals
Pediatricians willing to disclose medical errors but consider current reporting systems inadequate
Most pediatricians support both reporting medical errors to hospitals and disclosing them to patients' families, but believe formal error reporting systems are inadequate and struggle with personal disclosure, according to survey results published in the February issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Physicians are encouraged to openly communicate about errors to improve patient safety, according to background information in the article. However, many errors remain unknown to both the medical institution and the patient involved. This could be due to the medical culture of autonomy and individual accountability, the threat of legal action or fear of damage to the physician's professional reputation. Pediatricians face additional challenges in error disclosure because a third party, the patient's parents, are involved.
Jane Garbutt, M.B.Ch.B., Washington University School of Medicine, and colleagues surveyed 439 pediatric attending physicians and 118 pediatric residents in St. Louis and Seattle. The survey, distributed by mail and on the Internet between July 2003 and March 2004, contained 68 questions examining the physicians' attitudes about and experiences with error communication. Types of errors included serious errors, which cause permanent or life-threatening injury; minor errors, which cause harm that is temporary and not life-threatening; and near misses, errors that could have caused harm but did not because of chance or intervention.
Seventy-six percent of the responding physicians agreed that medical errors were one of the most serious problems in health care, and most reported that they had been involved in at least one error: 39 percent a serious error, 72 percent a minor error and 61 percent a near miss. Among the physicians:
- 97 percent believed that serious errors should be reported to the hospital, 90 percent that minor errors should be reported and 82 percent that near misses should be reported
- Most (92 percent) had used a formal error reporting mechanisms, such as an incident report (65 percent)
- Many (74 percent) also used informal error reporting mechanisms, such as telling their supervisors (47 percent) or a senior physician (38 percent), and 72 percent had discussed errors with colleagues
- Only 39 percent thought that current formal error reporting systems were adequate
- 99 percent thought serious errors should be disclosed to patients' families, 90 percent that minor errors should be disclosed and 39 percent that near misses should be disclosed
- 36 percent had ever disclosed a serious error to a patient's family and 52 percent had disclosed a minor error in the past 12 months
- 96 percent of residents and 86 percent of attending physicians believed that disclosing serious errors would be difficult
- 69 percent of residents and 56 percent of attending physicians wanted disclosure training
"While pediatricians endorse reporting errors to the hospital and disclosing errors to patients' families, system changes are required to facilitate these communications," the authors write. "The hospital must facilitate the reporting of errors and near misses by pediatricians so that effective, safer systems of care can be developed and implemented. In additional, open and honest discussions following pediatric errors must occur to maintain and improve patient trust. Such open communications about errors are likely to benefit current and future pediatric patients, their families, pediatricians and the hospital."
### (Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2007;161:179-185. Available pre-embargo to the media at www.jamamedia.org.)
Editor's Note: Funding for this study was provided by grants from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; St. Louis Children's Hospital; and Seattle Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
REMINDER ON CHICAGO PATIENT SAFETY FORUM'S ANNUAL MEETING/DISCLOSURE PANEL
Just a reminder - the Chicago Patient Safety Forum's Annual Meeting is March 9th, and they will be holding a panel discussion on implementing disclosure which will feature implementation of the new disclosure program at the University of Illinois Teaching Hospitals in Chicago, IL. For more information, visit this link
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