Recent Events in the News

Tackling Medical Errors from Below

Posted on Aug 06, 2011

The New York Times this week has a piece discussing where information for anti-medical error initiatives should be found. Too many studies and suggestions, the article notes, focus on what bureaucrats and remote researchers believe would work on a grand, impersonal level. Too few improvement methods ask what each specific hospital's weaknesses are in the first place.

The article, written by a physician, lauds the "National Surgical Quality Improvement Program" (NSQIP), an initiative launched by the largest professional organization of surgeons, the American College of Surgeons. Last week, almost 1000 medical professionals attended a conference in Boston to discuss the program.

NSQIP began in the 1990s with great success in the Veterans Health Administration. By 2004, it was expanded to other hospitals and is now prevalent in 400 centers. The program follows patients for 30 days from a participating hospital. Results are compared among other hospitals, and any discrepancy in care is examined in detail. In this way, each hospital directly and efficiently tackles its gaps in performance.

Thus far, approximately 70% of participating hospitals have lowered their mortality rates and 80% have lowered complication rates. This has decreased costs substantially.

Still, the program is difficult to implement for some hospitals in financial straits, because it costs $10,000 per year and much more in additional training. Furthermore, such a program is not as attractive to potential patients as is a high-tech investment, which means NSQIP is not effectively marketable in the short-term.

If you would like more information about how medical malpractice and accident cases work in the state of New York, I encourage you to explore my educational website http://www.oginski-law.com. If you have legal questions, I urge you to pick up the phone and call me at 516-487-8207 or by e-mail at lawmed10@yahoo.com to answer your questions. That's what I do every day. I welcome your call.

Gerry practices law exclusively in the State of New York. Within New York he practices primarily in the following counties: New York, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, Staten Island, Nassau and Suffolk. Technically, Brooklyn is known as "Kings County," and Manhattan and New York City are known as "New York County." Staten Island is known as "Richmond County." These counties make up the New York metropolitan area.