Patient Comfort Ratings Displayed: Medicare Web Site Users Can View How Others Felt About Hospital Stays

Would-be patients trying to pick a hospital can now check the opinions of other patients by using data from Medicare, the U.S. health-insurance program for the elderly and disabled. The information, posted Friday on Medicare’s Web Site, enables people to compare the views of patients at a local hospital with those of patients treated at other area hospitals or those across the U.S. Such transparency is supported by hospital groups, said Rich Rasmussen of the Florida Hospital Association, though he said consumers should not use the Medicare site — hospitalcompare.hhs.gov — as the only source of information on hospitals. He added that hospitals would like to see similar transparency for other health-care providers.

Please click on the link below to read the Orlando Sentinel article:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/consumer/orl-hospital2908mar29,0,3106950.story

For more information on defending medical malpractice, nursing home and general liability matters in Florida contact Howard Citron at Citron & Associates, P.A. – www.citronlegal.com.

Physician Liability for Lost Patient Records Explored

In a letter to this column, a physician voiced concerns about what his liability exposure might be if his patient records were destroyed as a result of a catastrophic event such as fire, flood, or, in the case of electronic records, a major computer malfunction. Well, the short answer is that of all the things you need to worry about, this one shouldn’t keep you up at night. The loss of patients’ medical records would surely disrupt your practice and potentially cause significant problems for some patients. However, beyond the business and follow-up issues associated with trying to take care of patients without their medical records, it’s unlikely that you’d be held liable for the loss of these files. To make a legitimate claim, a patient would have to first establish that you or someone on your staff negligently caused the event that led to the records’ destruction—for example, if an employee snuck a smoke in the records room and accidentally started a fire. There’s no established protocol regarding steps that should be taken to protect paper records. And certainly you’re not expected to maintain duplicate copies of all medical records at some off-site location to protect against a catastrophic loss. However, if you have an EHR system, back up your medical records at least daily. Your failure to do so could result in some liability exposure if the records are lost, and a patient suffers an adverse event because they’re unavailable. Probably the greatest risk you face from losing patient records is the trouble that might be encountered in defending against a malpractice claim, or even a reimbursement challenge, without the records to show exactly what you did and why.

Please click on the link below to read the Medical Economics article:

http://medicaleconomics.modernmedicine.com/memag/Medical+Malpractice%3A+Documentation/Your-liability-for-lost-records/ArticleStandard/Article/detail/490667?contextCategoryId=43935

For more information on defending medical malpractice, nursing home and general liability matters in Florida contact Howard Citron at Citron & Associates, P.A. – www.citronlegal.com.