See more news stories at this week’s Satellite Edition over at ER Stories.net.

Pfizer may be in legal trouble after some lots of its oral contraceptives had the wrong medications. Now women who took the mislabeled medications have an increased chance of becoming pregnant.
Plaintiff attorneys wonder whether there will be class action lawsuits with hordes of women with unwanted pregnancies demanding justice.
The simple solution is that every person who files a lawsuit but who has not made arrangements to give their child up for adoption immediately upon birth should have their lawsuit dismissed. Adoption fees can go to the hospital to cover delivery costs. None of this horsepuckey about how Pfizer should pay every pregnant patient the costs of raising their children until the children turn 18. Either the women want the children or they don’t.

Then, according to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, if your child doesn’t come out right and the doctor misreads an ultrasound, physicians can now be sued for a patient’s emotional distress.
In other words, “sorry, honey, but we would have aborted you if we had known what emotional distress your birth defects would have caused us.”

Patients gone wild. Michigan man going to trial after beating ED secretary on the head with a computer keyboard. According to this article, the accused “doesn’t recall anything.”
I have to wonder why this guy decided to go to trial. He doesn’t remember anything, but he’s going to get a jury to believe he didn’t do it? Were the imprints from the computer keys caused from some other source?

Plaintiff wins nothing at trial in a $1 million dollar lawsuit alleging that physician caused a patient’s death from drug resistant staph.
Keep taking your ZeePacks for coughs and runny noses, then demanding Levaquin when, for some odd reason, the ZeePacks don’t work. You could be the next one who dies from MRSA.

Blogger suggests repealing the unfunded mandate EMTALA as a means to cut health care costs, then gets blasted in the comments as a “moral degenerate” for doing so. Ouch. Give those commenters the best health care that someone else can pay for and give it to them now.

Study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry shows that most adolescents who come to the emergency department with self-harm don’t get mental health evaluations.
Do non-suicidal patients who cut themselves really need a mental health evaluation in the emergency department? Our job in the emergency department is to determine which patients are a threat to themselves or others. We can’t hold every patient who scratches their forearm with a sharp object for hours or days in the emergency department until a psychiatrist can see them.
If the AACAP has a problem with that, maybe it should tell its members to be more available for patient evaluations rather than trying to impose its will on other specialties.

What is the most common cause of infection outbreaks in US hospitals? Hospitals and cruise ships have a lot in common.
Also of note is that 35% of hospitals responding to the survey had at least one infection outbreak in the prior two years. Often these organisms are drug resistant. Those who want to be admitted to the hospital “just to be safe” may not be as safe as they think.
Also see this report about all the dangerous organisms present in pediatric ICUs.

What is the emergency department in China like? Everyone pays up front for the visit, for x-rays, and for medications or they don’t get care, x-rays, or medications. Then again, the doctor gets paid $13 for the visit and the total cost for reducing a dislocated shoulder was $150.

Cyberchondria. It’s catching. And it’s another reason that a free market and deregulation will cut down on medical expenses. You think your chronic back pain is a blown disk? Go to the walk-in MRI center, plunk down $3000 for an MRI and reading and prove yourself right … or wrong. When you’ve wasted many thousands of dollars in testing, then you can seek medical help to recommend other tests you can go purchase in order to quell your anxiety.

Moving to a different hospital is not quite the same as moving to a different a home. It involves police to man the routes between hospitals, 15 fully staffed ambulances dedicated just to the move, and a heck of a lot of crates.

Recent study by Deloitte (.pdf file) shows that most US physicians believe that health reform will increase costs, increase wait times in the emergency department, and change incentives to medical providers. Physicians believe that their incomes will decrease and that the increased demand for services by the newly “insured” will likely cause the scope of practice of midlevel providers to increase.
60% of physicians gave our healthcare system a “C” or “D” rating. Physicians were split on whether the Affordable Care Act is a step in the right direction. 78% of physicians would be comfortable with medical courts and binding arbitration as opposed to the current medical malpractice system.
Finally, most physicians are pessimistic about the future of medicine. 69% believe that bright students are being turned off to medicine, 57% think the practice of medicine is in jeopardy, and only 18% feel excited about the future of medicine.
Now of course the data are probably flawed because Deloitte didn’t survey any plaintiff’s attorneys, but, if you drink the Press Ganey Kool-Aid, data is valid regardless of the source, the bias, or the numbers.

See more medical news from around the web at the Satellite Edition of this week’s update on ER Stories.net

Meth heads do the “shake and bake” … on their face. New process for making methamphetamines in a 2 liter soda bottle often backfires, causing explosion and burns to the junior chemist. Because most people suffering these burns don’t have insurance and because the mandated care from this activity averages $130,000 per person (60% more than other burn patients), the financial strains are contributing to the closure of several burn units across the country – leaving fewer resources available for everyone.

Correlation or causation? Study shows that elderly patients who visit the emergency department are almost four times as likely to develop a respiratory or gastrointestinal infection in the following week as are elderly patients who do not visit the emergency department. The patients developing the infections were also “sicker” at baseline, though.
Interesting hypothesis, although I wonder whether this is similar to asserting that almost four times as many patients who die in the emergency department arrive by ambulance and therefore drawing an inference that ambulances cause patients to die.

Patients gone wild. Minnesota man arrested after “throwing items around the emergency room” then assaulting emergency physician and nurse.

Emergency department patient complaining of suicidal tendencies left alone for less than 5 minutes, some incident occurs, patient ultimately discharged from hospital, yet now Medicare is threatening to pull hospital’s funding. Did someone not buy all of the Joint Commission books before the inspection and upset the Joint Commission inspector? Notice how the hospitals are condemned for some heinous act yet how the Joint Commission doesn’t disclose what the acts were? Can’t find any mention of High Point Regional Hospital anywhere on its web site. Makes it a lot more difficult to question the judgment of the inspectors, doesn’t it?

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Also check out the Satellite Edition of this week’s update over at ER Stories.

Florida teen wins a $12.6 million medical malpractice award after being given an expired vaccination and then contracting an infection which developed into sepsis, DIC, and gangrene resulting in amputations of all four limbs.
I’m sure the antivax crowd are having mind cramps over this concept. The vaccines are full of toxic waste and don’t work. The toxic waste is what caused the illness. They should be sued for giving it. Wait. The patient came down with an infection. Infections are good to build the immunity so we don’t need vaccines. That’s what we want. Then why did the teen win all that money? Wait. Maybe expired vaccines cause the infections. That’s it. Yeah. That’s our angle. Hey – will someone get Jenny McCarthy on the phone? Or Dr. Wakefield … does anyone know Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s number?

Speaking about crazy ol’ Florida …man in Naples, FL emergency department waiting room backs a female patient into a wall, gropes her breast, tries to unzip her pants, and then gets a patella to the cha-chas. Hobbles out of the hospital singing tenor and is arrested in the parking lot holding his crotch.

We’re not done yet … New bill requires that any accident victim in Florida must go to the emergency department to be checked out or risk losing personal injury protection benefits from their insurer. Because the emergency departments aren’t crowded enough without having to worry about patients going there because some brainiac legislator creates a law forcing them to do so.
Yet another reason not to live or practice medicine in Florida.
In fact, I just created a new page on my blog: the Top Ten Reasons Not to Practice Medicine in Florida. Permalink to the upper right. Add any reasons that I forgot to the comments section.

GruntDoc commented on this earlier, but I had to mention it now since it was just released as one of the top 10 articles on Medscape. The FDA has given approval to a device called an “Infrascanner” to detect intracranial bleeding. The device can detect “nearly 75%” of hematomas detected by CT scan. Hematomas don’t include deeper bleeding, so I’m assuming that these results don’t include subarachnoid hemorrhages or intraparenchymal bleeds. The device also excludes hematomas 82% of the time, meaning that the unfortunate 18% of patients are going to get a burr hole drilled in their head for bleeding that the Infrascanner says is present when it is really not. Or they’ll just get a CT scan which makes the whole Infrascanner thing a waste of time and money.
However, I am developing a similar device for predicting intracranial hematomas which I will soon seek approval from the FDA. A prototype is pictured at the right.

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Welcome to the New Year! I had a couple hundred e-mails with health care news sitting in my e-mail box and don’t have time to read all the articles, so I decided to declare health care news “bankruptcy,” delete all the messages and start fresh.

So … back to the regularly scheduled updates, and the regularly scheduled update Satellite Edition.

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He should have just called a Bambalance. After running into deer in the road, drunk driver in New York arrested for trying to take deer to the emergency department for medical care.

Is loser pays a solution for frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits? Absolutely.

Speaking about “loser pays,” Glenn Reynolds from Instapundit brings up a very good point regarding using loser pays in criminal cases. Why shouldn’t government attorneys have to pay for defense attorneys’ fees if the jury finds a defendant not guilty? As it stands right now, a defendant can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to defend himself against criminal claims with the only solace being “hey, at least you’re not going to jail.”

Family of 85 year old patient on Coumadin awarded more than $200,000 when radiologist misses a 7mm subdural hematoma after patient fell and hit her head. Emergency physician and hospital were also sued, but were found not liable.

Patients gone wild returns. Florida man refuses to leave emergency department without being fed a meal. When police arrive to escort him out, he whips out his Willy and urinates on the floor. Then he goes to a phone and repeatedly dials 911 to ask for a ride to another hospital. Officer complains because the guy was passing “unbearable” gas when being patted down.

“Permanent hospital residents” costing billions in care because they are illegal immigrants and have no place where they can be discharged. Total cost is several million dollars per year just for one struggling New York hospital.
How should the patients be managed more efficiently? Perhaps being flown to their country’s consulate and dropped off there?
Thanks to DefendUSA for the link.

Teens try to get high overdosing on Coricidin cold medication. Instead end up in hospital. Time for the American Academy of Pediatricians to get out their pitchforks and torches to lobby for removal of another drug from the market. JCAHO would probably be all over it, but unfortunately, the overdoses didn’t occur inside a hospital.

While you’re waiting to see the doctor … would you mind doing chest compressions? Remember last year when Royal Columbian Hospital in British Columbia set up treatment beds in an adjacent coffee shop? This year, overcrowding has forced the same hospital emergency department to set up patient beds in the hospital lobby.
On one hand, I applaud the emergency department staff for having the guts to do what they have to do in order to provide care to patients. On the other hand, what in the heck is wrong with the healthcare system that providers are forced to take such measures?

Are all those rashes that people get when they take medications really “allergies”? This study says that they aren’t. About 25% of the time, the rashes are due to something else. From my experiences, I’d say that 25% is an underestimate.

The government comes up with an updated version of the emergency severity index to determine which patients need immediate care and which do not. Anyone in “severe pain” (can you say “10 out of 10”) or having “emotional outbursts” in triage should be considered for immediate treatment. Does anyone else see a problem with where this is heading?

Texas nurse sues Emerus 24 HR Emergency Room for wrongful discharge after being accused of stealing/diverting drugs from the emergency department and then reporting defamatory information about her to the Texas Board of Nursing.

In Pakistan, one hospital’s emergency department x-ray machine has been broken for 2 months. Patients are upset over the inconvenience of having to go to the outpatient department for x-rays. Oh, by the way, patients have to pay for outpatient x-rays while those obtained in the emergency department are free.

What’s the best medication to treat clostridium difficile colitis? The jury is still out. No antibiotic has been proven superior to the others. However, Flagyl is a heck of a lot cheaper than vancomycin.

Calling all Americans: Blood donations needed. Every two seconds a patient needs a blood transfusion. Pay it forward.

People living in houses near Virginia hospital warned to stay inside after intoxicated patient flees the emergency department. The patient is so dangerous that we have to hide women and children when he’s in public, yet when he gets to the emergency department, staff gets scrutinized if he is restrained and staff gets threatened with job loss if he isn’t satisfied with his visit. Yep, that’s about right.

Medical malpractice reform losing physician support? Give me a break. I work for a hospital. Who in their right mind would suggest I or any other employed physician is any less interested in whether we are named in a frivolous lawsuit? Sure, take my 401k and my house keys. Really. No interest in all. In addition, it seems as if Dr. Kirsch hasn’t heard of the National Practitioner Data Bank.

Some hospitals either close their emergency departments during the holidays, such as these in British Columbia or keep them open with nurses only such as these in Australia.

81 year old Canadian patient has abdominal surgery postponed 4 times in past 18 months. This time, busy emergency department and insufficient ICU beds was cause for cancellation. Wife asks if the government can add a “smidge” more money to hospitals so that sick people can at least have a chance of surviving. But don’t forget – the care is free.

A man after my own heart. And here’s his blog.

VA hospital settles claim for $275,000 after leaving two “SmamWow” 14×11 sized towels in patient’s abdomen after surgery. Isn’t that some kind of “never event” according to … the agency that runs the VA hospitals?

In 2010, dental problems caused 115,000 emergency department visits in Florida alone. That’s about 0.1% of all the emergency department visits in the whole country.

Illinois psychiatric patient waiting in emergency department for 6 hours becomes agitated and combative prior to being transported to room. When restrained, becomes unresponsive and dies. Preliminary cause of death is “excited delirium.”

Money well spent? Medicare has forked over nearly a quarter BILLION dollars in the past 10 years for … external penis pumps. That doesn’t even include implantable devices or pills like Viagra.

As North Dakota oil industry booms, so does medical care. Doctor appointments are not available for several months, the wait time in the emergency department has doubled, orthopedic surgeries have tripled, oh yeah, and STDs have reached an all-time high as well.
When waitresses in the area make $100/hour including tips and nurses … don’t, one nurse also considers whether to stay in health care.

Good ruling or not? Ohio Supreme Court rules that medical malpractice claims must be supported by expert testimony before they can proceed to trial. Although the issue in the case was whether informed consent claims are considered medical malpractice claims for purposes of the law, were a lot of attorneys trying to win med mal trials without medical expert testimony before the ruling?

Patients gone wild? Texas man walks into emergency department, says that he’s “taken something” and then passes out. Then wakes up and begins fighting throwing punches. After staff undressed him and called the police, they found a bleeding chest wound as well.

New Zealand hospital says “enough is enough.” Patients who abuse medical staff will be prosecuted.

Visitors gone wild? Vancouver perv walks into patient room and sexually assaults patient waiting to be checked for pelvic pain. Later arrested and charged. Patient plans to sue hospital for letting the man walk through the emergency department.

Personally, I’ll take my chances with the nasal washes. Two Louisiana people die from amoebic meningoencephalitis after irrigating nasal cavities with Neti Pot.

Get your flu shot before its too late. Montreal Children’s Hospital has been seeing 80-90 additional patients each day due to influenza and other respiratory illnesses.

More Medicare patients are going in for their “free” annual physicals under new health care reform law. However, as Michael Cannon from the Cato Institute notes, there is no such thing as a “free” lunch. In other words, current taxpayers are picking up the tab for the “free” physicals.

I’d feel a little unsafe watching eight little same-aged kids running around the mall. Court rejects fertility doctor’s appeal to have his medical license reinstated. Doc who made “Octomom” famous loses license after medical board concluded that revocation of license was “necessary to protect the public.”

No, this isn’t a drive through emergency department. In a scene straight out of the first Terminator movie, an Australian teen drives his car straight through an emergency department wall, bursting a water main.

Spirited medical malpractice debate takes place over at Point of Law. Ted Frank hits a home run dispelling a visiting professor’s regurgitated trial lawyer claim that lack of the threat of medical malpractice makes sloppy doctors.
“Professor Svorny’s students are not allowed to sue her for any alleged educational malpractice, another cap of zero. I trust that Svorny’s lack of incentives created by liability do not reduce her efforts in teaching ….”

Illinois hospital/surgeon settle malpractice case for $17.5 million after patient suffers multi-system organ failure and other complications after hernia surgery.

Also see more medical news from around the web over at the Satellite Edition of this week’s update at ER Stories.

Whooping cough resurgence in New York. More than double the number of cases than occurred in the next-largest outbreak in 2006.
I renew my assertion that vaccinations should not be mandatory, but that parents who fail to vaccinate their children should be charged with endangering the welfare of a child and should incur civil liability if their children contract preventable communicable diseases or transmit those diseases to others.

Now from the “how else can we justify our existence” department. JCAHO is considering whether to regulate “overuse” of health care treatments, procedures, and tests. That’s right, boys and girls, soon the clipboard brigade will descend upon hospitals and start throwing out citations if too many CT scans or surgeries are performed.
You’ll have to click on the “read more” link at the above site to read about it. I avoided pasting into the story the unique URL that the link generates.
That got me thinking. When is someone going to do a study showing how JCAHO is a threat to patient safety?

Patients gone wild. Illinois man gets a twofer. First he’s arrested for breaking a car door at a bowling alley parking lot. Then he is arrested again after going to the emergency department and attempting to punch out a female emergency physician, hitting her in the ribs.

Who are you freaks and what did you do with Bullwinkle? Flying squirrel gets loose in emergency department, repeatedly jumps from light head-on into glass window.
In other news, PETA is now considering whether to pursue an EMTALA action against the hospital for failing to perform a proper screening exam before releasing the animal into the wild.
And in still other news, JCAHO is considering whether to declare glass windows a threat to patient safety because patients *could* make the same mistake and run head-on into glass, killing or seriously injuring themselves.
Hat tip to hashmd for the story.

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That’s why they call it dope, sister. Upset woman searching for boyfriend’s missing finger draws attention of police. Boyfriend was inside emergency department having a laceration repaired on his intact finger. Police find syringe full of methamphetamine in seat where boyfriend was sitting. Woman and boyfriend both arrested.

Emergency department haiku. This guy is good.

Australian government web site showing emergency department waiting times shown to post inaccurate information, not to update information for days, and alleged to be a “waste of resources.”
One leader opposing the site says that “people don’t go to emergency departments unless they need to be there. If they need to be there, they will go to the closest one. Not review a website first.”
Don’t worry. Nothing like this would ever happen in the US.

Another article on how hospital rankings are arbitrary. Feds’ Hospital Compare website measures outcomes one way, US News measures same outcomes an entirely different way. Patients or administrators who believe either set of rankings end up being the real losers.
A man with one watch always knows the time. A man with two watches is never sure. A man who reads a watch that measures time in ounces is just a dimwit.

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Late start today after some family issues and working a shift. For more medical news from around the web, see the Satellite Edition of this week’s update over at ER Stories.

He swallowed WHAT? New book publishes pictures about foreign bodies in patients’ bodies — that have found their way into many orifices. Some picture excerpts from book included at this link.

More patients gone wild. Maine teenager high on bath salts busts up hospital room and damages monitoring equipment to the tune of $30,000. Gets discharged from hospital straight to the Greybar Motel and charged with “terrorizing.”

More patients gone wild. Man picked up by Chicago paramedics after car accident, then begins punching paramedic in the head after he gets into ambulance. Now the patient’s car is trashed and he’s charged with a felony.

Home Depot isn’t the place to get silicone for your butt augmentation. If the “doctor” performing the procedure in a hotel room is using a glue gun to inject the silicone, that’s probably a good sign that you’re going to have a complication … like death.

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See more medical stories from around the web over at the Satellite Edition of this week’s update at ER Stories.net

Remember how the Congressional Budget Office predicted that so many more people would have health care “insurance” after health care reform was enacted?
A recent Gallup poll shows that the CBO is inept at making these predictions.
Instead of a 6 million people gaining health insurance as the CBO predicted, more than 4.5 million people LOST their health insurance.
And we already know that health care insurance doesn’t equate to health care access any more than automobile insurance means that you have access to a car.

What was voted the most hazardous technology in hospitals this year? It’s not what you would think. Finally an agency looks into the unintended consequences of “safety” measures.