By John Tingle The World Health Organisation (WHO) has just produced a very informative and helpful report on the need to view patient safety as a global concern and to highlight resources that they have made available to deal with the problem and those in development. Patient safety is a fundamental principle of health care and…
By John Tingle and Jen Minford It is important to take a broad holistic approach when looking at patient safety policy development and practice in the NHS. There cannot be a one size fits all approach and a number of possibly quite disparate organisations and stakeholders in the NHS and beyond must be consulted and…
By John Tingle and Jen Minford All too often it seems that patient safety and health quality policy makers work in their own silos unaware of what is taking place in other countries, wasting valuable resources by trying to re-invent the wheel. There is a clear need to have a way of cascading the news…
By John Tingle In the introduction to a new report on the state of acute hospitals in the NHS in England, the Chief Inspector of Hospitals, Professor Sir Mike Richards of the Care Quality Commission (CQC) controversially states: “The NHS stands on a burning platform — the model of acute care that worked well when…
By Brad Segal Manuel—not his real name—was admitted to the hospital with decompensated heart failure. As a child he had scarlet fever which, left untreated, had caused the valves of his heart to calcify and stiffen. Over time, pumping against increased resistance, his heart’s contractions began to weaken until finally, they lost all synchrony and…
By John Tingle There are some very interesting Government patient safety and access to justice policy development activities currently going on in England. Maternity Services In maternity services, there is a clear recognition by Government that safety is inconsistent and that there is significant scope for improvement. Our still birth rates are amongst the highest in…
By John Tingle We can learn a lot from how other countries deal with patient safety issues and it can save us from reinventing the wheel at some financial cost.Healthcare improvement Scotland (HIS) is the national healthcare improvement organization for Scotland and is part of NHS Scotland. The organization provides some excellent patient safety resources….
By Alex Stein In a recent case, Frankfort Reg. Med. Ctr. v. Shepherd, 2016 WL 3376030 (Ky. 2016), the Kentucky Supreme Court held that the attorney-client privilege and its work-product extension do not protect records compiled by a hospital’s risk-management specialist. Records that the Court held to be discoverable contained information pertaining to a baby delivery…
By Alex Stein The Colorado Supreme Court recently delivered an important decision on medical malpractice, P.W. v. Children’s Hospital Colorado, — P.3d —- (Colo. 2016), 2016 WL 297287. This decision denied a hospital the comparative negligence and assumption of risk defenses that purported to shift to the patient the duty to eliminate or reduce the risk…
By Alex Stein The United States District Court for the District of Connecticut has recently delivered an important decision that opens up new possibilities for suing hospitals and clinics. This decision allowed a patient alleging that hospital employees injected her with a contaminated medication to sue the hospital in products liability. Gallinari v. Kloth, — F.Supp.3d…
