Monthly Archives: March 2011

It’s a subject that we’ve blogged about a lot: how applying aviation safety principles to medicine could revolutionize the practice of medicine and reduce the incidence of medical malpractice. (See earlier blog posts here and here). Now Dr. James Bagian (whom we’ve previously blogged about here), a doctor and pilot, has co-authored a journal article [...]

According to a recent study by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, nearly two-thirds of the physicians who supervise medical residents doubt that a new regulation capping residents’ workdays at sixteen hours will reduce residents’ fatigue. (H/t WSJ Health Blog). According to one of the doctors responsible for this survey, the survey’s respondents might [...]

File it under news that no one is talking about but that everyone should be: a new study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology reveals that a new obstetric safety program implemented in several New York hospitals has reduced medical malpractice payouts in those hospitals by 99 percent! That number is so [...]

According to the Centers For Disease Control, the number of central line infections in hospital ICUs has dropped fifty-eight percent since 2001. A central line infection might not seem like a big deal, but they are extremely serious: between twelve and twenty-five percent of patients who contract a central line infection die as a result. [...]

In a New York Times op-ed piece published last week, entitled “Treat the Patient, Not the CT Scan,” Dr. Abraham Verghese takes young doctors to task for their overreliance on sophisticated medical imaging procedures, such as CT scans. Dr. Verghese hits on some points about the use of CT scans that are familiar to readers [...]

Law professor William Jacobson senses a tension, bordering on self-contradiction, in two ideas favored by conservatives: the repeal of the Affordable Care Act (what is often styled as “Obamacare”) and support for tort reform measures, such as H.R. 5, a bill that I’ve previously blogged about, that would cap, by federal law, the damages that [...]