- “It Didn’t Feel Like a ‘Win'” [“Birdstrike, M.D.”/White Coat]
- Federal ban on long shifts by hospital residents may have harmed safety, in part because it drove up number of patient handoffs [USA Today]
- N.J. bill would narrow chance for suits against first aid, ambulance and rescue squads [NJLRA]
- Bill in Georgia legislature aims to apply workers’-comp-like principles to med-mal [Florida Times-Union]
- I mostly agree that med-mal reform is for states to decide, but Ramesh Ponnuru may underrate Washington’s legitimate role in prescribing legal consequences when it pays for care [Bloomberg/syndicated]
- Shift burdens through price control: NJ assemblyman’s bill would prohibit insurers from considering docs’ claims experience except for cases that result in actual court findings [NJLRA]
- Someone’s hand stuck in the sharps box again? Sixth time this month [Throckmorton]
Filed under: Georgia, hospitals, medical malpractice, medical malpractice insurance, New Jersey, nonmonetary costs of litigation
One Comment
If you read the whole article carefully, on how restricting resident hours may have increased medical error rates, it is suggested that one of the factors may be that residents are being required to do the same amount of work in less time, that the time restrictions have not resulted in in a lower patient load. I can see how that might actually increase the error rate. Residents are supposed to be in training, and are payed a fixed salary regardless of patient load – unlike already trained physicians who may bill by the hour/procedure. Therefore, one of the ways a hospital can improve its “bottom line” is by pushing more of the work onto residents. It’s an old issue, and given that residents don’t have the freedom to simply say “no”, we are not dealing with freedom to contract here.