MACRMI Launches Medical Liability Website

February 11, 2013

  • February 19, 2013 at 10:32 am
    Sarah says:
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    I do not doubt the earnestness of the champions of such efforts to bring quick, honest and transparent resolution to instances of medical mistakes (they must justify their high paying jobs somehow), but the reality remains: there is a massive disconnect between what hospital executives tell the public they are doing via articles like this one and what the caregivers on the floor are actually up to. Hospital executives seem to look for any means to place their names and their hospital’s reputation in a positive light, mostly at the expense of patients and their caregivers. We’ve heard time & time again from hospital executives about healthcare’s efforts to be more “patient centric”, but PCPs, ER docs and hospitalists still do not communicate with one another, at the expense of patients who suffer needless long hours in an ER and unwarranted inpatient days. We hear from the C-Suite about their hospital’s strides toward total implementation of EMR, yet patients must continue to wait in line for hard copies of MRIs to hand carry to their next appointment. Google “LEAN”, and you’ll likely find articles that shower praise on the two executives now finding glory in their latest “CARe” acrynom, yet ask the caregivers, if you can find one, how Six Sigma has impacted their lives. Healthcare, specifically the focus by healthcare executives spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and FTE hours on the latest gimmicky bandaid, is sick. To improve, hospital executives need to focus on their core challenges. EMR works best when your IT infrastructure speaks the same language. If it doesn’t, then fix it. Patient centric care works best when doctors across the patient’s spectrum of care talk with one another. If they are not talking, then find a way to make them talk. LEAN and CARe and other cherry-on-top initiatives should garner hospital funding AFTER the core business is fixed. End the inordinant amount of spending on ineffective initiatives that may offer instant gratification in the newspaper but little long term promise to the community. Redirect those funds into filling vacant positions and holding staff accountable for communicating to one another, to the patient’s extended caregivers, and to the patient themselves. If hospital margins are the concern (and when are they not?), then priority number one should be moving patients quickly from the ER to a room, and once healthy, discharging them just as fast. During that stay, if the ER attending and the hospitalist can converse with the patient’s PCP and specialists, then watch how fast medical mistakes become a problem of the past. And hey, if after the core problems are fixed you still feel the desire to get your name in the paper, by all means, work on “CARe.”



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