WashingtonCU strongly urges the Governor to stand with consumers and ensure that current reporting on infections associated with hip and knee replacement and cardiac surgeries is retained in the law.
Your Washington lawmaker is voting soon to take away your right to know important life-or-death information in your state!
Consumers Union statement on the regressive bills.
Reports from the states with laws requiring public reporting of medical errors.
Stopping the occurrence of medical harm
Testimony of Elizabeth M. Imholz, Special Projects Director; Consumers Union before California Senate Health Committee; October 20, 2010
On November 17, 2009, Consumers Union hosted a forum in Washington DC based on the 10-year anniversary of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) 1999 study on medical harm challenging our health system’s progress on preventing medical harm 10 years later. We released a report earlier in the year on this
Summary of state laws hospital infection reporting laws.
Consumers Union statement for today’s public hearing
The January issue of Consumer Reports on Health newsletter tells patients and their relatives how to get the best care and prevent hospital infections and medication errors.
Washington House & Senate Health Committees Vote to Roll Back Public Reporting of Hospital Infections / Bills Undermine Efforts to Hold Hospitals Accountable For Preventing Hospital Acquired Infections
Consumers Union urged Congress today to strengthen the law that governs the approval of medical devices to ensure
Consumer Reports Poll: Almost 9 in 10 Americans Say Public Should Have Access to Information Collected by Feds on Doctors
HHS decision to remove online access runs counter to Administration pledge to promote transparency
The medical device industry lobby has criticized a report on medical device regulation before it was published.
The report that found thousands of medical devices are allowed to go on the market without proper testing for safety.
When Patients File Complaints Against Health Care Workers Washington Law Could Serve As A Model For Other States.
CONSUMERS UNION SAFE PATIENT PROJECT — NEWS RELEASE Please Note: Consumers Union can connect reporters with patients who have suffered from hospital infections and other medical harm. To find out more, contact Michael McCauley at mccami@consumer.org For Immediate Release: Tuesday, April 12, 2011 Contact: Michael McCauley (mccami@consumer.org), 415-902-9537 (cell), 415-431-6747,
Patients who file complaints against doctors and other health care providers would be able to find out more information about their complaints.
New Law Includes Important Patient Safety Provisions That Will Save Lives and Health Care Dollars
Last month on July 25, members of the Washington Advocates for Patient Safety (WAPS) commemorated Patient Safety Day in their home state of Washington by joining several people working on health care issues in the state and giving a voice to patients who have experienced preventable medical harm.
Meet the eleven consumer advocates who will be attending a U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS)hospital infection meeting this week.
In 140 characters on Twitter, I asked a serious question about hospital-acquired infections.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced last Thursday that it has added readmission rates for more than 4,000 hospitals across the U.S to its Hospital Compare website. With proper care, most people should not have to go back to the hospital shortly after release. This is a key indicator of quality and varies a lot between hospitals.
U.S. lawmakers held a hearing a few weeks ago to figure out why VA officials still weren’t following proper procedures for cleaning endoscopes that put more than 11,000 veteran patients at risk.
Our new report “To Err is Human – To Delay is Deadly” calls attention to the IOM’s unfulfilled call to action.
A few years ago, Dr. Manoj Jain was skeptical of hospital infection reduction—thinking hospital infections were the norm for ICU patients
The Seattle Times’ new three-part series on MRSA, the antibiotic-resistant superbug that’s killing thousands of hospital patients every year made me want to wash my hands over and over like Lady Macbeth.
According to new FDA data, consumers like you make up the majority of drug adverse event reports submitted, replacing physicians.
Our bodies get sick sometimes. But if we look at the American health care system as a living body itself, we’re waiting in the ER. (A review of PBS’s Frontline film “Sick Around the World”)
Physician operates on wrong eye; will settle but not publicly admit mistake
News Tribune: “Six years after a landmark state law forced Washington hospitals to publicly report the rates at which their patients were catching serious infections while in care, Washington lawmakers are tinkering with the law. And that worries a major consumer advocacy group, Consumers Union.”
A former nurse writes about the inside knowledge she had about a doctors and other nurses concerning their performance history, including medical errors. But patients don’t have access to that same information.
Washington state elderly woman dies due to an overdose of morphine by an unlicensed, unregistered nurse in a nursing home. Yanling Yu of Washington Advocates for Patient Safety quoted.
Only 1 in 5 malpractice claims against doctors leads to a settlement or other payout, according to a new study published in the New England Journal Medicine. Most patients who are harmed are not able to pursue a lawsuit.
In an effort to save money and improve care, Medicare, the federal program for the elderly and disabled, is about to release a final rule aimed at getting hospitals to pay more attention to patients after discharge. This includes cutting back payments to hospitals where high numbers of patients are re-admitted [often due to infections or medical harm].
The medical device industry is crawling over Washington in an attempt to discredit an upcoming Institute of Medicine report that could propose a tougher approval process for a wide range of devices like hip implants, hospital pumps and external heart defibrillators.
A sampler of articles on the issue of fees for medical device manufacturers, a debate heating up in Washington DC.
Hundreds of hospitals are routinely performing a type of chest scan that experts say should be used rarely, subjecting patients to double doses of radiation and driving up health-care costs.
Harriet Washington: “Drugmakers don’t just compromise doctors; they also undermine top medical journals and skew medical research.”
“Last year there wasn’t a single fatal airline accident in the developed world. So why is the U.S. health care system still accidently killing hundreds of thousands? The answer is a lack of transparency.”
Washington Healthcare-Associated Infection Program
Washington’s largest lobby, the pharmaceutical industry, racked up another banner year on Capitol Hill in 2007, backed by a record $168 million lobbying effort, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of federal lobbying data.
On February of 2010, my father, at the age of 89, was admitted to a hospital in Washington for an evaluation because he started showing signs of slight confusion. At his admission, he was in a fairly good state of health. He did not have any serious life threatening illness. However, he suddenly died at the hospital on the 5th day of his admission
In 2008, my Dad was in a local hospital where he was given a sulfa medication, despite the fact that he was wearing a red wrist band warning about his well-documented life-threatening sulfa allergy, and despite that many medical references do not support this off-label use of the drug in my Dad’s medical condition. Furthermore, without an emergency, the doctor and the nurses never informed my Dad or me (his medical power of attorney at the hospital 24/7) about the drug being a sulfa drug, or any of its risks. We even repeatedly asked the doctor about the drug risks before its administration. Yet the doctor withheld all this critical drug information, and lied about the drug risks (which turned out to be significant to my Dad). We later learned that there was also a plan to monitor my Dad after the first dose to watch for an anaphylactic drug reaction. But no one told us anything about this monitoring plan, even after my Dad showed signs of a serious drug reaction.
The doctor was supposed to be replacing a stomach feeding tube (goes through the stomach wall, for people who can’t chew/swallow properly). He didn’t understand the procedure for removing the old tube, got frustrated, and ripped it out by force.
After taking a bad fall in January 1999, Alice Buehring required surgery to replace the humeral head in her right shoulder. Unfortunately, her recovery was painful and mostly unsuccessful. By May 1999, she discovered why. It turned out that Alice developed a Pseudomonas A infection in the surgical site, which was fast becoming septic. She spent the next week in the hospital on IV antibiotics to treat the infection. She was discharged to continue her IV treatments at home for another six weeks followed by oral antibiotics for another six weeks.
My 14-month old daughter (with an ongoing brain condition but in great health) was admitted to a Seattle children’s hospital on 11/10/2005 for implantation of a shunt. An infection occurred as a result of the surgery and she was readmitted on Thanksgiving, 11/24/05. She had subsequent new and overlapping infections.
The Safe Patient Project is a Consumers Union campaign focused on eliminating medical harm, improving FDA oversight of prescription drugs and promoting disclosure laws that give information to consumers about health care safety and quality.