Did you know there is a statewide patient safety program that requires hospitals to notify in writing any patient affected by a serious medical error? Well, neither do a lot of the hospitals! The Oregonian just reported that this “required” written notification took place less than half the time. In fact, of the 80 cases where written notification should have been provided, only 36 were successfully accomplished.

So why the failure to send out written notifications? Even the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems doesn’t seem to have a concrete answer. Admitting such medical mistakes can be difficult, but apparently nine hospitals have succeeded in sticking to the patient safety program. In other words, if hospitals want to notify patients of medical errors, they can. It’s not rocket science.

Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane, Washington, is losing an emergency room doctor. Dr. Jovan Ojdrovic has worked at Sacred Heart for 23 years but has decided to retire because he believes patient care and safety are being sacrificed for profit. These changes, Ojdrovic says, have happened over the past three years. Administration has put a greater emphasis on profit and has also cut doctor pay by some 30 percent.

Administration at Sacred Heart counters that staff has been reduced to increase efficiency and reduce redundancy and that medical care costs have increased, so the hospital has to make fiscally responsible changes. It also says patient care will not be impacted negatively by any changes.

Despite the implementation of new safety procedures designed to reduce medical and surgical errors, the errors continue. This is understandable, of course, since the health care industry is run by humans, and humans make mistakes, but really, there are still more errors than there should be. The Oregonian just reported that a 4-year-old underwent surgery on the wrong eye, even though the correct eye had been marked and designated as the eye on which to operate. The surgeon said the mark was covered up when she started to operate and that she did not realize until she was already operating that she was working on the wrong eye. The operation took place at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center.

Here’s an interesting case. A violent psychiatric patient at Western State Hospital didn’t want non-whites to treat him, so administration complied, assigning only whites and light-skinned attendants to work in that ward. Now the hospital faces a lawsuit filed by nine employees. The employees include both whites and non-whites. The hospital’s policy, the lawsuit claims, discriminates against both whites and non-whites. Whites face more danger by being forced to work in the violent ward more frequently, and non-whites are being kept from performing their jobs by being excluded from working in the ward.

The popular prescription diabetes drug Avandia will only be available in very limited distribution as of November 18, 2011. Avandia has been on the market for more than a decade, but a 2007 study indicated that it increased heart attack risk in patients with type 2 diabetes by about 40 percent. Also in 2007 David Graham, a drug safety expert with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), reported that Avandia had caused heart-related problems in 66,000-200,000 people.

Children’s Hospital in Seattle seems to be suffering from a few too many nurses making critical errors. Two nurses there have just been charged with unprofessional conduct and violation of the minimum standard of care by the Washington Department of Health. Apparently the errors made by these two nurses were but a few among quite a few other medication errors that have caught the critical eye of investigators.

Nurse Linda Kimman caused a patient in the ER to go into cardiac arrhythmia when she accidentally administered epinephine through an IV tube. Nurse Beth Yost apparently decided on her own to give a sick infant three medications. The infant later died, but the medications were not found to be the cause.

Washington State patients can breathe a bit better now that law SHB 1493 has been signed. It increases transparency with medical boards that discipline physicians receiving complaints.

Prior to the law, patients who complained about medical errors to state disciplinary boards found their concerns entering a black hole. This is precisely what happened to Yanling Yu and Rex Johnson, who filed a complaint against a doctor who treated Yu’s father. Yu’s father allegedly died from an allergic reaction to a medication. Yu and Johnson’s complaint, filed with the Washington Medical Quality Assurance Commission, entered the black hole. Frustrated by the lack of response and information from the board, Yu and Johnson targeted changing the law.

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.