There’s a new measurement tool in town for assessing hospital errors and safety, and it’s finding that there are more errors than we originally thought. In fact, according to this tool, a third of patients in the U.S. will be victims of a medical error during hospital stays. The new tool was developed at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Massachusetts. Old tools include voluntary reporting by hospitals and an assessment method developed by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHR).

Dr. Vishal Makker just can’t seem to get enough of spinal fusion surgeries. In fact, he outperformed all other spinal fusion surgeons in the nation in 2008 and 2009. Makker operated on 61 Medicare patients in 2008 and 2009, and on 16 of those patients he performed more than one spinal fusion. The Wall Street Journal uncovered this information when it studied a Medicare database to investigate whether some doctors defraud or take advantage of the Medicare billing system.

Legacy Health of Portland implemented a new initiative two years ago with the aim of lowering infection rates and patient deaths, and it looks like they have succeeded. According to an article in the Oregonian, infection rates have dropped by about 45 percent, and patient deaths declined about 14 percent over the past two years. The iniative, labeled “Big Aims,” was undertaken at six hospitals and involved all employees, from housekeepers to doctors.Staff members were instructed to follow safety checklists.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is investigating tainted IV nutrition fluid that may have contributed to the deaths of nine patients in Alabama. So far no evidence directly linking the bacteria to the deaths has been found, but the investigation is still young. Some nineteen patients in six hospitals in Alabama were found to have a bacterial infection, specifically Serratia marcescens bacteremia, in their blood. Of those nineteen, nine died.

The contaminated IV nutrition in question, TPN, or total perenteral nutrition, was from one pharmacy, Meds IV. The pharmacy has since recalled all of the compounded IV fluids it produced and has also discontinued production as the CDC investigates. TPN is administered to patients via an IV using a catheter.

Recently I blogged about Birgilio Marin-Fuentes, the man who drove himself to the Portland Adventist Medical Center as he suffered a heart attack. When he arrived at the hospital parking lot, he lost consciousness and crashed. Some police officers were there and tried to help him. One officer ran the short distance to the hospital emergency room seeking help but was told to call 911. Nobody from the emergency room came out to the parking lot to assist until an ambulance had been summoned via 911. Marin-Fuentes later died. The hospital defended its actions by stating that it was simply following protocol.

It sounds like the plot to a bad made-for-television movie: a doctor flees the country after he is sued for malpractice. Sadly, it is truth, not fiction. Mark Weinberger was a surgeon in Indiana who was on the lam for more than five years. He was caught in Italy in late 2009. He was apparently living on a mountain in a tent.

Weinberger faced a medical negligence civil lawsuit in 2004 for failing to diagnose a patient’s lung cancer. The patient was 50 years old and died of the lung cancer. Rather than diagnosing the cancer, Weinberger performed allegedly unnecessary surgeries. He then fled the country to avoid the trial. Now that Weinberger is back in the United States, he will finally be tried.

There has been an increase in the number of parents who choose not to immunize their children, and now some in the medical world are taking a stand. Some physicians, including pediatrician Dr. Bradley Dyer of Seattle, are refusing to treat children who have not been vaccinated, citing the safety of other patients. Dr. Dyer feels doctors need to be more assertive about turning away unvaccinated patients.

Where do you think the best place to have a heart attack is? You’d think it would be near or in a hospital, but you might be wrong, particularly if you’re in a hospital parking lot, and the hospital happens to be Portland Adventist Medical Center.

The Internet has become a part of everyone’s lives, and most of us rely on it heavily for information. Tell me you don’t Google your symptoms when you feel like you’re coming down with something. I think just about everyone conducts research online, and most of the time we believe what we read. Well, that might not be the best idea. According to this article from the Hartford Courant, an online database of physicians (the State of Connecticut eLicensing Website, to be exact) at the Connecticut Department of Public Health web site lacks crucial information.

Some of you may remember when the Payette Clinic, a pain clinic in Vancouver, WA, was investigated and raided by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in March 2009. Payette was owned and run by two nurse practitioners who, as a result of the investigation, had to give up their licenses to prescribe painkillers (Class II opiates).