More than 20 years after its inception, hospitals soon will be able to use a database that lists the names of caregivers from around the nation who have been disciplined or named in a malpractice action. The only problem is, the database is missing information on thousands of disciplined health professionals, an investigation conducted by ProPublica and the Los Angeles Times found.
State medical boards are supposed to file reports on all disciplined caregivers, but thus far no penalties have been levied against states that have failed to fully comply. For example, California's psychiatric technicians board lists 84 professionals who have been disciplined since 2008. But the federal government site run by the Health Resources and Services Administration lists none of those 84 professionals. In one instance that went unreported to the federal agency, two technicians were stripped of their licenses after failing to assist a woman who was choking on a paper towel.
Likewise, "hundreds of disciplinary actions" were taken against close to 100 nurses in Indiana in 2004 and 2005, but many of the actions taken were not listed on the database. One case involved a nurse holding a knife to a co-worker's throat.
After HRSA officials essentially denied that anything was wrong with the database, Mary Wakefield, the agency's head, admitted that records were missing. Wakefield and Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sent a letter to state governors last week asking them to help fill in gaps in the database.
"The programs are intended to be a central source of information to assist in addressing patient safety, fraud and abuse in our healthcare delivery systems," the letter reads. "The information in these national data banks is only as good as the information provided by State licensing boards and other reporting entities."
For more information on the database:
- read this ProPublica piece
- here's the Wakefield/Sebelius letter
Related Article:
Obama doesn't favor mandatory medical mistake reporting
High number of NY doctors on medical board watch list
N.C. law makes medical board info public
Virginia's medical board tightens discipline process
Complaints against Wisc. MDs seldom have effect
"Obama's approach
President Obama does not favor a national system for tracking medical errors but he favors these steps to reduce them:
Medical information technology: The administration last week announced more than $1 billion in grants to health care providers to build a nationwide medical records system by 2013.
Reducing Medicare reimbursements: The White House has reduced reimbursements to facilities that provide faulty care to seniors.
[Ed; The existing Govt. databases were riddled with holes]
More curbs to Medicaid providers: The administration wants to expand cuts to doctors and hospitals that give faulty care to the poor.
[Ed; The existing Govt. databases were riddled with holes]
Track hospital-acquired infections: Obama supports a provision in the House health-reform plan creating a national database of hospital-acquired infections.
Source: White House"
NO to a National Errors Database which might identify the workers who committed those errors, but another $Billion of OPM to create a "nationwide medical records system", which means, Forget the Real Problem and put EVERYBODY into another Government Database.
CMS Incentivizes Patients To Fight Medicare Fraud
CMS is offering up to a $1,000 bounty to beneficiaries to rat out their Doctors. And that's going to improve the quality of Healthcare How?
By putting Doctors into a mind set of Suspecting Every One of their Customers? AND, ..... then the Patient who Does rat out their Doctor, crooked or not, faces Blacklisting by Other Doctors.
This is NOT about improving Healthcare.
Incentivizing/Bribing Patients with a $1,000 is about enlisting every American to Spy on each other for Big Government.
Here's a few thoughts from Friedrich Hayek to mull over.
"As soon as the State takes upon itself the task of planning the whole economic life, the problem of the due station of the different individuals and groups must indeed inevitably become the central political problem. As the coercive power of the State will alone decide who is to have what, the only power worth having will be a share in the exercise of this directing power. There will be no economic or social questions that would not be political questions in the sense that their solution will depend exclusively on who wields the coercive power, on whose are the views that will prevail on all occasions.
I believe it was Lenin himself who introduced to Russia the famous phrase “who, whom?” – during the early years of Soviet rule the byword in which the people summed up the universal problem of a socialist society. Who plans whom, who directs and dominates whom, who assigns to other people their station in life, and who is to have his due allotted by others? These become necessarily the central issues to be decided solely by the supreme power.
More recently an American student of politics has enlarged upon Lenin’s phrase and asserted that the problem of all government is “who gets what, when, and how.” In a way this is not untrue. That all government affects the relative position of different people and that there is under any system scarcely an aspect of our lives which may not be affected by government action is certainly true. In so far as government does anything at all, its action will always have some effect on “who gets what, when, and how.”
There are, however, two fundamental distinctions to be made. First, particular measures may be taken without the possibility of knowing how they will affect particular individuals and therefore without aiming at such particular effects. This is the point we have already discussed. Second, it is the extent of the activities of the government which decides whether everything that any person gets any time depends on the government, or whether its influence is confined to whether some people will get some things in some way at some time. Here lies the whole difference between a free and a totalitarian system.
The contrast between a liberal and a totally planned system is characteristically illustrated by the common complaints of Nazis and socialists of the “artificial separations of economics and politics” and by their equally common demand for the dominance of politics over economics. These phrases presumably mean not only that economic forces are not allowed to work for ends which are not part of the policy of the government but also the economic power can be used independently of government direction and for ends of which the government may not approve. But the alternative is not merely that there should be only one power but that this single power, the ruling group, should have control over all human ends and particularly that it should have complete power over the positions of each individual in society."
And here's another site detailing FDA known Direct Effects of mind control poisons.
Risperidone: DEATH 805 Reported
And how about that Paxil/Seroxat/Aropax stuff? This must be what 'Safe and Effective" really means.
Paroxetine: Completed Suicide, 2,273 Reported
And then there's Cipramil/Citalopram/Celexa
Citalopram: Completed Suicide, 1,161 Reported
And then there was this Different Drug called Lexapro/Escitalopram
Escitalopram: Completed Suicide 841 Reported
Oh, wait a minute; It's not really a Different Drug after all.
Kind of like this Eli Lilly Prozac stuff, ...... with all of its different names.
http://bonkersinstitute.org/prozacked.html
Do you think that Allowing Government, which keeps proving itself Unwilling to Fix this protectionist racket because it Created this protectionist racket, to take over/create even More of this protectionist racket is a good idea, or is Free Stuff from Government a colossally bad idea?
I think you have to start somewhere. The science of chemistry had just a few elements, few facts when it started. Electricity also took a long time for science to understand to exploit as a tool for mankind.
ReplyDeleteToday "little brother" (everyone taking photos of everything) is capturing criminals.
As time passes, there will be fewer and fewer places for incompetence (or criminals) to hide.