Ramanisblog

Tag: patient care

  • Doctor Forces Surgery To Meet Target, Patient Dies

    I have been critical of some Doctors who have become crass after money and for unethical practices like accepting gifts from Pharma Companies, forcing patients to take unnecessary  medicines.

     

    The scenario worsened after the entry of Corporates into Medicare making Medicare a Hospitality Industry.

     

    Many of the Corporate run hospitals are meant for Star Hotel Luxury than for patient Care.

     

    You may some of my posts under Medicine, Consumer forum.

     

    Now emerges a shocker.

     

    A Doctor in Uk forced operation on a patient to meet his ‘Target!’

     

    He met his Target but the patient died.

     

    There is another case where a Doctor forced three operations on a patient, patient died.

     

    Corporates mean profit, Profit means Sales ‘Targets”

     

    This evil can be eradicated only by patients going to Doctors who thorough checks you up physically,does not prescribe a battery of Tests ,  who listens to your problem , most importantly does not work in a Corporate run Hospital, and who does not have a Fancy Title or Degree.

     

    Story:

    Ray Law pictured in Lincoln with his wife Kathleen Photo: Steve Hill
    Ray Law pictured in Lincoln with his wife Kathleen Photo: Steve Hill

    Ray Law, 60, died of complications two days after his prostate cancer operation at Lincoln County Hospital in February 2010.

    On the day he died, a senior doctor raised serious concerns about the incident in an internal memo, saying the targets were putting patients at risk and putting “enormous and unsustainable pressure” on surgeons.

    Mr Law should have been put on a high-dependency ward, according to the memo sent to hospital managers, but he ended up on a general ward due to “increasing pressures”. Despite these concerns being raised, Mr Law’s widow Kathleen was never told about them.

    On Thursday night, Mrs Law told The Daily Telegraph of her “anger” at being kept in the dark and said: “I want answers.”

    Her daughter Nikki Law, 35, said: “It’s absolutely despicable. I have no trust in the NHS whatsoever. We’ll definitely take legal action…

     

    It emerged that United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs Lincoln County Hospital, had attempted to gag Gary Walker, its former chief executive.

    He signed a £500,000 confidentiality deal preventing him from speaking out over patient safety worries at the hospital shortly before Mr Law’s death.

    On Thursday Mr Walker broke the terms of the order to claim he had come under “dangerous” pressure from NHS officials to prioritise target-hitting over emergency care. He refused to do so and was sacked. The memo, which did not identify Mr Law by name, said targets were exerting “enormous pressure” resulting in “ad hoc arrangements for surgery at short notice”. It noted: “This is not only prejudicial to ongoing patient care, but present enormous and unsustainable pressure on the operating surgeons.”

    The memo said normally only “one or two” radical prostatectomies would be performed by a surgeon in a day, but that “the additional case [of Mr Law] was required due to [redacted] target pressures”.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9871844/Father-died-after-surgery-driven-by-regime-of-targets.html

    A patient being treated at an under-fire hospital trust died after a surgeon had to carry out three “radical procedures” on the same day due to “target pressures”, a leaked letter from a doctor has claimed.

    Source :Telegraph)

    The surveyed doctors said they prescribed them to induce a “placebo effect,” to reassure patients or because patients pushed for a treatment.

    “For authorities to put their heads in the sand and pretend (placebo treatments) are not being given out is not helpful,” said Jeremy Howick of Oxford University, one of the authors of the study, which was published online Wednesday in the journal PLoS One. “We need to think of ways to maximize the benefits of using placebos,” he said.

    Howick and colleagues used a Web-based survey and got 783 responses. The sample was drawn from a list that included 71 percent of all doctors registered with the General Medical Council, the governing body for doctors in the U.K.

    The survey asked doctors if they had ever used a true placebo, like a sugar pill or another kind of dummy treatment such as a drug not meant for the patient’s condition or a non-essential examination including blood tests and X-rays. Nearly all of the doctors — 97 percent — reported having used some kind of placebo treatment at least once, while 12 percent reported having used a fake pill.

    http://ramanisblog.in/2013/03/23/doctors-admit-giving-useless-medicine-to-patients/

     

     

  • Joint Commission(Medicine)-A Fat cat That Helps itself.

    This  organisation, for fee US $ 46,00,000 plus the inspecting teams expenses like Travel ,accredits Hospitals.

    In return this body inspects Hospitals unannounced and conducts Survey.

    There have been scandals and manipulations as well.

    Any Doctor/Hospital knows or must know what is needed by way of systems,procedures, knowledge updating for patient Care.

    If you require some body to tell you that you are deficient in an area which is basically your Specialty, I do not know what a Professional you are.

    Note the Fees.These Fees are collected from the patients.

    Hospitals no longer are Hospitals but Five Star Lodgings where every whim of yours is catered to with minimum patient care.

    These professional;(?) Corporate Hospitals seems to indoctrinate Doctors to look grave before the patient,pretend to listen to what you have to say and write out costly prescriptions.

    I am yet to see a corporate hospital declaring the Patient completely fit and recovered.

    Always, please come back after 3/6/Months.

    Hippocrates must be turning in his Grave.

    The Joint Commission (TJC), formerly the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), is a United States-based not-for-profit organization. The Joint Commission accredits over 19,000 health care organizations and programs in the United States.[1] A majority of state governments have come to recognize Joint Commission accreditation as a condition of licensure and the receipt ofMedicaid reimbursement. Surveys (inspections) typically follow a triennial cycle, with findings made available to the public in an accreditation quality report on the Quality Check Web site….

    The declared mission of the organization is “To continuously improve health care for the public, in collaboration with other stakeholders, by evaluating health care organizations and inspiring them to excel in providing safe and effective care of the highest quality and value…

    All health care organizations, other than laboratories, are subject to a three-year accreditation cycle. With respect to hospital surveys, the organization does not make its findings public. However, it does provide the organization’s accreditation decision, the date that accreditation was awarded, and any standards that were cited for improvement. Organizations deemed to be in compliance with all or most of the applicable standards are awarded the decision of Accreditation.

    The unannounced full survey is a key component of The Joint Commission accreditation process. “Unannounced” means the organization does not receive an advance notice of its survey date. The Joint Commission began conducting unannounced surveys on January 1, 2006. Surveys will occur 18 to 39 months after the organization’s previous unannounced survey.[

    There has been criticism in the past from within the U.S. of the way the Joint Commission operates. The Commission’s practice had been to notify hospitals in advance of the timing of inspections.[13] A 2007 article in the Washington Post noted that about 99% of inspected hospitals are accredited, and serious problems in the delivery of care are sometimes overlooked or missed.

    Similar concerns have been expressed by the Boston Globe, stating that “The Joint Commission, whose governing board has long been dominated by representatives of the industries it inspects, has been the target of criticism about the validity of its evaluations”.[11] The Joint Commission over time has responded to these criticisms. However, when it comes to the international dimension, surveys undertaken by JCI still take place at a time known in advance by the hospitals being surveyed, and often after considerable preparation by those hospitals…

    Joint Commission International, or JCI, is one of the groups providing international healthcare accreditation services to hospitals around the world and brings income into the U.S.-based parent organization. This not-for-profit private company currently accredits hospitals in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and South America, and is seeking to expand its business further).[28]

    JCI also offers a variety of educational programs, especially “Practicums” – more information, including attendance costs, is available through their Web site.[29]

    There are other accreditation organisations based in countries other than the USA which fulfill a similar internationally-orientated role to JCI. These include:

    • In INDIA National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers or NABH

    Cost of accreditation

    JCI publishes an average fee of $46,000.00 USD for a full hospital survey.Reimbursement for surveyors’ travel, living expenses and accommodations is required in addition to the fee.

    There may be additional costs related to consultancy work etc. directed towards assisting a hospital to be successful in the accreditation process.

    Other international accreditors incur different levels of costs, some costing less than JCI….

    n 2008, the Joint Commission collected $165 million in revenue, mainly from the fees it charges U.S. health care organizations for evaluating their compliance with federal regulations. Its expenses during this period were $162 million. Its total return on investments in 2008 was -$27 million (loss), and the total value of its investments was $83 million. In 2007, its collected revenue was $149 million. Its expenses were $148 million. Its total return on investments was $5 million, and the total value of its investments was $107 million. The Joint Commission’s primary investments in 2007 and 2008 were in stocks (about 50% of investments) and trusts (about 40% of investments

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Commission#Operation

  • Shamed: the top hospitals with the worst death rates

    Names do not matter.Patients beware.
    Story:
    The three hospitals with the highest patient death rates in the country can be named, amid a deepening crisis over the standard of care in the NHS.
    Bolton, Greater Manchester and Basildon NHS trusts have elite “foundation status”. However, The Sunday Telegraph has learned that statistics to be published this week will show a higher percentage of patients died while in their care in 2008-09 than in any other trusts in the country.
    With the average mortality rate set at a score of 100, Basildon scored 131, Royal Bolton 122 and Tameside Hospital, in Greater Manchester, 119.

    Basildon hospital apologises to patient
    Chief Executive of ‘appalling care’ hospital has affair with safety manager
    The disclosures have cast further doubt on Labour’s flagship foundation hospitals’ policy, which has been under attack since appalling standards of care at Mid Staffordshire Hospital were exposed in March.
    Last night patients’ groups demanded that ministers carry out a “total overhaul” of the system, which they said was “failing” patients. Investigations by this paper have found:
    – Eight foundation hospitals are failing so badly that they have breached the terms of their licence to operate and are being placed under close supervision by the NHS watchdog, Monitor.
    – The leading children’s hospital Alder Hey has been issued with a “warning notice” for breaching basic infection standards and putting vulnerable young patients at risk of killer infections – just two weeks after the trust declared itself “the best in the country”.
    – Three ambulance services have also been issued with the same notices after failing to properly decontaminate equipment, or provide clean services for the most high-risk patients.
    – Bosses of foundation trusts with high death rates have awarded themselves bumper pay rises. Chief executives at the eight foundation trusts with the highest death rates in 2007-08 had average salary rises of 15 per cent when their institutions took on the coveted status.
    Last week Basildon was condemned by inspectors who found “blood-spattered” walls and filthy conditions.
    The hospital has the worst patient death rate in the country, according to the health care information analysts Dr Foster.
    Hospitals were also rated for overall patient care. Again, Basildon came off worst; followed by Scarborough and North East Yorkshire and Lewisham Hospital trust, in South London, respectively.
    Katherine Murphy, from the Patients Association, said the foundation hospital system had reached crisis point. “Foundation hospitals claim to be in a premier league, but yet more evidence is coming out that many of them are failing their patients,’’ she said.
    There are also question marks over the way ratings given to hospitals rely on their own assessment of their performance. At Basildon Hospital, managers gave themselves 13 out of a 14 possible marks for safety and cleanliness. The ratings were published just weeks before the damning inspection report was drawn up.
    At Alder Hey, hospital managers awarded themselves the maximum score for cleanliness. When its self-assessments were added up, it was awarded an overall rating of “excellent” for its services.
    On October 15, the hospital sent out a press release, titled “best in class, best in country”, describing how it had achieved the most successful result of any children’s hospital.
    Twelve days later, when inspectors from regulators the Care Quality Commission (CQC) arrived unannounced, they found filthy conditions, with brown running water, mouldy bathrooms and soiled furniture and commodes. Toys were stored on top of equipment to clean bedpans.
    The inspectors also found that trays used to carry sterile equipment were dirty. Domestic staff said the parts of the wards they could not reach were cleaned just once a year, by outside contractors. The hospital was told it was failing to protect patients from infections, and ordered to make urgent changes. Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary said: “We have to move away from the flawed system of self-assessment to one where inspectors really understand what is going on in our hospitals.
    ”We need more spot inspections which focus on the results of treatment, the experiences of patients and their feedback.”
    Dr Steve Ryan, medical director at Alder Hey, said the trust apologised for the failings found by CQC during its inspection, but insisted that the faults found on the wards visited last month were not typical of the hospital. Ambulance services in the North East, East of England, and East Midlands have all been issued with warnings by the CQC about their basic hygiene.
    The regulator for foundation trusts, Monitor, is scrutinising eight trusts which are failing to meet basic standards.
    The Sunday Telegraph’s campaign, Heal our Hospitals, has received 1,200 signatures backing its calls for an independent inquiry into the way hospitals are regulated and run.
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/heal-our-hospitals/6680330/Shamed-the-top-hospitals-with-the-worst-death-rates.html