A topic of importance today is the healthcare industry itself, but I want to look further into the issues that have come about in the recent years. One particular issue of relevancy is medical malpractice, or medical errors for short. This term basically means something went wrong in the process of surgery or some type of care given to a patient, and that it deemed unsuccessful and the result could be death or even a disability. One statistic that is an eye opener is the amount of deaths in a single year just from medical errors. It is almost up to 100,000 deaths per year just from medical errors as well causing over a million injuries a year (Harris & Peeples, 2015). With this information, that is enough for anyone to look further into the
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Readmission rates are finally declining after years of being very high with little to no success in keeping patients from coming back. The takeaway from readmission rates were that there wasn’t enough safety and precautions taken during this time period of 30 days from release (Boerner, 2016). According to Boerner (2016), “For years, CMS has reserved the right to withhold payment for care related to hospital-acquired conditions, and, at the state level, Medicaid offices have done the same” (p.31). The Affordable Care Act established new rules and regulations, in which they penalized hospitals for high readmission rates. They were also penalized heavily for hospital acquired problems like medical errors or infections. Hospitals are given incentives, to drive down the readmission rates as well as encourage more safety to be implemented to ensure they stay down (Boerner, 2016). Now that these rules and regulations are in place, it’s too late to catch those who have been affected. The good news is that it increases the overall attention to the healthcare industry and the importance of identifying diagnostic errors correctly, as well as making sure all staff is educated on the continual process of improvement.
What seems to be one of the bigger issues associated with medical malpractice, is the insurance that covers both physicians and hospitals from getting sued. Malpractice insurance is in place to cover the doctor and or the facility in which the procedures are taking place. There are a couple different claims physicians can obtain one is claims-made insurance, and the other is occurrence coverage, Hoffman & Frese (2016) found
Readmission rates are finally declining after years of being very high with little to no success in keeping patients from coming back. The takeaway from readmission rates were that there wasn’t enough safety and precautions taken during this time period of 30 days from release (Boerner, 2016). According to Boerner (2016), “For years, CMS has reserved the right to withhold payment for care related to hospital-acquired conditions, and, at the state level, Medicaid offices have done the same” (p.31). The Affordable Care Act established new rules and regulations, in which they penalized hospitals for high readmission rates. They were also penalized heavily for hospital acquired problems like medical errors or infections. Hospitals are given incentives, to drive down the readmission rates as well as encourage more safety to be implemented to ensure they stay down (Boerner, 2016). Now that these rules and regulations are in place, it’s too late to catch those who have been affected. The good news is that it increases the overall attention to the healthcare industry and the importance of identifying diagnostic errors correctly, as well as making sure all staff is educated on the continual process of improvement.
What seems to be one of the bigger issues associated with medical malpractice, is the insurance that covers both physicians and hospitals from getting sued. Malpractice insurance is in place to cover the doctor and or the facility in which the procedures are taking place. There are a couple different claims physicians can obtain one is claims-made insurance, and the other is occurrence coverage, Hoffman & Frese (2016) found