The Missouri House of Representatives is scheduled to vote soon on a legislative bill that passed easily through the state’s Senate last week. The bill that is now one step closer to being enacted as law is a tort reform measure that, ostensibly at least, is intended to lower insurance premiums by capping awards for persons injured through medical...
Read MoreAdverse patient outcomes at nursing homes in Missouri and nationally can cover a lot of territory. Bedsores — often referred to as pressure ulcers — are not an uncommon occurrence at nursing facilities. Stories from across the country chronicle with some regularity episodes of patient malnutrition and dehydration. Medication errors are an obvious source of concern in the industry....
Read MoreAccording to a recent paper in the journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, some 70 percent of doctors never bother to clean their ties. Unfortunately, about a third of those ties test positive for Staphylococcus aureus — the bacteria that causes staph infections. Those white lab coats doctors wear? According to the paper, a survey found that the average...
Read MoreConsumers Union, the nonprofit group that publishes Consumer Reports magazine, has just published a ratings review of some 2,463 U.S. hospitals across the nation that specifically measures the quality of the surgical care they offer. The ratings, which are the first of their kind, were based on a survey of the records of Medicaid patients. The survey considered how...
Read MoreIn 2006, a Tulsa man says, a plastic surgeon convinced him to undergo a simple rhinoplasty, or cosmetic nose job. That surgery was badly botched, and another surgery was required. And then another. Tragically, after a total of 22 surgeries the man is now left with no nose at all and has been forced to breathe through a straw...
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