"New Article Published on Trends in Hospital Safety"

"Bernstein & Associates, Architects is pleased to announce the publication of a new article on hospital safety.  The article has been published in the March 2009 edition of Hospital Newspaper."  read more...

"Leapfrog Group's 2008 Top Hospitals Excel at Patient Safety", (c) Daniel Danzig, The Leapfrog Group, 24 September 2008

"Twenty-six hospitals and seven children’s hospitals have been named 2008 Top Hospitals, based on results of the Leapfrog Hospital Survey. The survey is the nation’s premier hospital patient safety evaluation tool and provides consumers and health care purchasers with up-to-date assessments of 1,220 participating hospitals’ quality and safety at its Web site, www.leapfroggroup.org."  read more...

10 Patient Safety Tips for Hospitals, (c) US Department of Health and Human Services, October, 2007

"Medical errors (or adverse events) can occur at many points in the health care system, particularly in hospitals. These tips for hospitals are from studies by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), which has funded more than 100 patient safety projects since 2001. Many findings from AHRQ research can be put into practice in hospitals by following 10 practical tips."  read more...

"Safest Hospital Initiative to Save Lives, Cut Costs", © Pharmahorizons Inc., May 2007

"Three of the nation's leading hospital systems on Thursday announced a plan to combat the growing epidemic of medical errors in hospitals by developing the first comprehensive approach to patient safety. The Safest Hospital Alliance, comprised of Wellmont Health System, Adventist Health System and Novant Health, will tackle an issue that the Institute of Medicine rates as the
eighth-leading cause of death in the United States, higher than motor-vehicle crashes, breast cancer or AIDS."  read more...

"Builder Gets $400 Million Job - Robins & Morton to erect `safest hospital'", (c) Dawn Kent, Birmingham News, 5/22/07

"Birmingham-based Robins & Morton has been chosen as the general contractor for a new teaching hospital in Boca Raton, Fla., a $400 million-plus project that is one of the most expensive in health care under way in the United States. Boca Raton Community Hospital, slated to open in 2012, also is being billed as the "world's safest hospital" because of special features aimed at preventing accidents and mistakes by medical staff.  read more...

Patient Safety in Hospitals- An Insiders View, (c) Medical University of South Carolina,  11/29/05

"The Institute of Medicine which is a very sophisticated scientific medical group, made up of some of the leading physicians in this country, dropped a major bombshell when it reported that thousands of hospital patients die or are harmed by errors made by caregivers.  The caregivers are doctors, nurses, pharmacists and countless other unseen people like technologists and secretaries in laboratories, whose work it is to help people not harm them.  I have worked in my practice exclusively in a hospital for over thirty years and know that errors are made.  Most errors do not result in adverse patient care, the majority are caught before the patient is ever exposed to the potential consequences.  Nevertheless, the Institute of Medicine is correct in identifying unintentional mistakes which do and have caused problems.  The exact number can be argued and the remedy to this will be argued even more.  This certainly is grist for the politicians' mill."  read more...

Are Hospital Safe, (c) Jennifer Pirtle,  Women's Health Magazine, September/October 2005

"Kathy McCabe, 31, had already seen two doctors about the stabbing pain in her stomach. But when it worsened, she headed to the ER near her home in Washington, D.C. After lying on the hospital floor in anguish for more than 2 hours, McCabe was given a CAT scan so doctors could see 3-D images of her organs. The radiologist said the CAT scan showed nothing unusual, so the ER staff gave McCabe two things. A prescription: More painkillers. And directions: Go home. The next day McCabe visited three more doctors. One internist referred her to a surgeon, who wanted her to undergo exploratory surgery. The third doctor, an internist who specialized in geriatric issues, questioned McCabe thoroughly and then urged her to retrieve her CAT scan from the hospital. He took one look at the film and told McCabe that she had advanced diverticulitis, a serious infection of her digestive tract. Worse, her bloodstream was overwhelmed by the resulting bacteria."  read more...

"How safe is your hospital", (c) Sarasota Magazine, January, 2005

"In November, Florida voters approved a state constitutional amendment that finally gives patients the right to review the records of any healthcare facility's or provider's adverse medical incidents, including those that could cause injury or death. Previous law prohibited the practice."  read more...

"U.S. Prescription Drug System Under Attack - Multibillion-Dollar Shadow Market Is Growing Stronger", (c) Gilbert M. Gaul and Mary Pat Flaherty, Washington Post Staff Writers, 10/19/03

"For half a century Americans could boast of the world's safest, most tightly regulated system for distributing prescription drugs. But now that system is undercut by a growing illegal trade in pharmaceuticals, fed by criminal profiteers, unscrupulous wholesalers, rogue Internet sites and foreign pharmacies."  read more...

"How Safe is Your Hospital" (c) Consumer Reports, January, 2003

"The quality of care you receive during a hospital stay can determine how quickly and how well you recover--or if you recover at all. You might expect consistently good care to be delivered at almost every hospital in a nation with the world's top doctors, most advanced technology, and highest per-capita spending on health care. But when we surveyed and invited e-mails from Consumer Reports readers about their recent hospital experiences, we found enormous variations. They ranged from an Alabama man's smooth-sailing, lifesaving, $1.5 million liver transplant to an 83-year-old Tennessee man's death after a careless emergency-room staff sent him home without treating the broken bones and internal injuries he had suffered from falling down the basement stairs."  read more...