Occurrence of some so-called "never events" in hospitals may depend partly on unmodifiable risk factors such as patient characteristics, undermining the rationale for denying Medicare payment for their treatment, researchers said.

Concerns about medical liability, insurance coverage and a lack of training for doctors mean an apology after medical errors is the exception.

In this article one can find the highlights of the article written by Kevin B. O’Reilly, published on amednews.com.

A survey from the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) has found that the recession may be compromising medication safety—at least according to hospital workers surveyed nationwide.

In an ISMP survey of healthcare professionals made in fall 2009, the economy appears to be putting various pressure on a number of hospitals—particularly through staff cuts—causing them to take steps in response to the economic downturn that could put patients at greater risk.

The Belgian network of Adheco, partner of The Patient Safety Company, keeps expanding: this time the Jan Yperman hospital has chosen to implement the Clinical Risk Management System of TPSC throughout the whole organisation. Employees were already reporting systematically all incidents, but from now on the CRMS will enable them to also analyse all (near) incidents, to classify them and to set up improvement actions.