News tagged with 'Wrong-Site Surgery'

California has collected over $2 million in fines from hospitals that have made medical errors which kill up to 200,000 patients every year nationally. The latest fines have been issued to 13 hospitals.

A simple surgical safety checklist reduced patient-mortality and complications by more than a third. If all hospitals were to use the same checklist, they could save tens of thousands of lives and $20 billion in medical costs annually

Nine surgeries were either done on the wrong site, or the wrong surgery was performed in Utah hospitals last year. Of those, seven included foreign objects being left inside the patient.

Starting October 1, 2008 Medicare will no longer pay hospitals for additional care associated with 11 types of hospital-related conditions. Medicare's no-pay list has been updated from eight to eleven types of medical errors and infections.