Misdiagnoses represent a medical safety problem for people in New York and nationwide. Failure to diagnose properly could delay appropriate treatments or even result in death and disability. The findings of multiple studies indicate that diagnostic errors affect approximately 12 million people every year. To aid the quality improvement programs at hospitals, a researcher from Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality has created a computer program that can analyze hundreds of thousands of patient records. Called Symptom-Disease Pair Analysis of Diagnostic Error, the program applies algorithms to find patterns of mistakes.
According to a patient survey, the diagnosis of interstitial lung disease, or ILD, in New York and across the rest of the nation is usually incorrect. The result of this common misdiagnosis often results in patients experiencing emotional stress.
New York residents might have heard the unpleasant phrase ‘flesh-eating bacteria” in news reports. The proper name of this frightening condition is necrotizing fasciitis. The nickname comes from the fact that it destroys skin and muscle tissues, and the infection can be fatal if not treated. What’s even more frightening is that sometimes its symptoms are mistaken for something much more common: the flu.
New York patients who undergo a medical procedure expect that they will be well cared for. However, there are times when it does not go as planned, and this could cause additional health problems. Ideally, people who this has happened to will get answers as to why a mistake happened. If not, it may be worthwhile to consider legal action against parties who may have played a role in causing the error.
While the health care industry in New York has taken great strides toward eliminating prescription medication errors, there are still instances that lead to higher levels of mistakes. This is dangerous given that medication errors can lead to adverse and sometimes even fatal reactions between different medications.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning residents of New York and other states that sepsis can be a fatal condition. Sepsis occurs when the body’s natural defenses against infection cause an extreme inflammatory response.
When patients visit emergency rooms in New York, medical personnel face challenges in collecting accurate information about medications. Electronic medical records might contain previous errors about medications, or physicians and nurses might lack the time and expertise to fully investigate patients’ medication histories. A study that appeared in BMJ Quality & Safety examined these problems and concluded that medication errors represented the most common reason that inpatients experienced injuries in hospitals.
What’s being called the world’s smallest 3D-printed biopsy robot could improve the accuracy of biopsies needed to take a tissue sample to confirm a diagnosis of breast cancer, which is the most common cancer in women. This technology could also make the process of getting a biopsy less time-consuming for women in New York while also minimizing the potential for human error. Nearly 2 million women have the procedure each year to examine a suspicious lump or an imaging abnormality.
Worries about being mistreated while under anesthesia are some of the most pervasive fears New York patients have when entering the hospital for surgery. One lawsuit reflects these fears coming to life for a hospital worker who was photographed nude while on the operating table.
