DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog

Blog Authors

Latest from DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog

DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog

Knee and hip surgeries offer a glimpse into disparities in health care costs

January 21, 2021

https-www-protectpatientsblog-com-wp-content-uploads-sites-69-2021-01-kneelady-300x222-jpg

With so many older Americans entering their later years in better shape than earlier generations and wanting to stay active, knee and hip replacements have become some of the most common surgeries performed in pre-pandemic times. The cost of this work, however, varies greatly. And surgeons may be promoting procedural variants to not only build business but also to increase their revenue for these operations. Consumers, policy makers, regulators, and politicians may want to…

DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog

Only in America: Desperate patients raise billions in online donations to pay for crushing medical costs

By Patrick A. Malone

January 19, 2021

https-www-protectpatientsblog-com-wp-content-uploads-sites-69-2021-01-gofundme-300x130-jpg

Modern medicine may be providing patients with significant improvements in key treatment areas, but the cost of care has become so crushing that online campaigns for charitable medical aid have become heartbreakingly common in the United States. A team of researchers from institutions across the country reported that the well-known GoFundMe website, between May 2010 and December 2018, had provided a platform for more than 1 million aid appeals — with 281,881 of these…

DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog

Exiting Trump officials create confusion and stoke anger on vaccination plans

By Patrick A. Malone

January 17, 2021

https-www-protectpatientsblog-com-wp-content-uploads-sites-69-2021-01-coronashot-300x178-jpg

President Trump’s health leaders, racing toward the exits after their boss incited an end-of-term insurrection at the Capitol, acted to sow their own destructive confusion. They left the incoming Biden Administration with new fury and frustration surrounding the efforts to get hundreds of millions vaccinated against the increasingly deadly coronavirus. This wasn’t a juvenile prank like pulling “w” keys off White House computers. It was yet another incomprehensible bungle in what has been…

DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog

Speeding, distraction, intoxication: Why U.S. roads turned so lethal in 2020

By Patrick A. Malone

January 15, 2021

https-www-protectpatientsblog-com-wp-content-uploads-sites-69-2021-01-carwrecked-300x200-jpg

Motorists who didn’t make new year resolutions should sign on to some lifesaving, commonsense vows: They can pledge to slow down, focus on task more, and to halt the record road carnage that happened in 2020. In the year just ended, Americans drove fewer miles than they had in recent years due to public health restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic and the virus-caused economic collapse. But drivers logged destructive results when they hit the…

DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog

In nursing homes, Covid-19 deaths and infections spike, as vaccinations lag

By Patrick A. Malone

January 13, 2021

https-www-protectpatientsblog-com-wp-content-uploads-sites-69-2021-01-covidnhomestatsdec20-300x271-jpg

The brutal data slip in and out of the headlines. But the terrible toll of the coronavirus on the aged, injured, and sick in institutions is increasing in unceasing and unacceptable fashion. Not long ago, HIV-AIDS activists crusaded against the public’s ignoring a lethal infection with the stark saying: Silence=Death. Is it becoming necessary to intone this about the relentless but seemingly tacitly accepted, coronavirus-related mortality, sickness, and suffering of those in long-term care? As …

DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog

Rich investors buy up MD practices and seek to strip patient safeguards

By Patrick A. Malone

January 12, 2021

https-www-protectpatientsblog-com-wp-content-uploads-sites-69-2021-01-documentsigning-300x156-jpg

Wealthy investors want to enrich themselves yet more, partly by pushing doctors to oust patients from their practices unless they sign away invaluable constitutional rights. These rights can protect them if they are harmed while receiving medical services. Patients’ safeguards, however, too often vanish when businesses compel customers to sign on to “forced arbitration,” Bloomberg Businessweek reported, noting that this consumer menace is rising in medicine as hedge funds buy up physician groups. Rich…

DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog

U.S. must take more honest shot at battling this pandemic

By Patrick A. Malone

January 10, 2021

https-www-protectpatientsblog-com-wp-content-uploads-sites-69-2021-01-covidshotlines1-300x170-jpg

As the nation recoils from the deadly insurrectionist attack on Congress and the United States Capitol, a direct line also must be drawn to the huge health harms that President Trump and his administration incited with a flood of falsehoods, relentless attacks on science and expertise, and the reckless politicization of public health. This administration will leave office with the nation hurtling toward 400,000 coronavirus deaths and 22 million infections. The disease is unchecked.…

DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog

With driving and wrecks still virus limited, do insurers owe customers more?

By Patrick A. Malone

January 8, 2021

https-www-protectpatientsblog-com-wp-content-uploads-sites-69-2021-01-dcemptystreets-300x200-jpg

Auto insurance companies and agents may have sent customers cards, fridge magnets, or calendars as part of their holiday cheer. But tens of millions of motorists may wish to demand more — both much more, and less. Consumer advocates say the coronavirus pandemic has curtailed driving and claims for wrecks enough still that auto insurers — who are raking in big profits — need in the new year to fork over more refunds or premium …

DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog

Hospitals start to roll out newly required data on prices and confidential deals

By Patrick A. Malone

January 7, 2021

https-www-protectpatientsblog-com-wp-content-uploads-sites-69-2021-01-compare-202x300-jpg

A lot of people in health care across the country are firing up their computers to dig into long-sought, confidential information from hospitals about their prices and deals they cut on them with an array of parties. As the Wall Street Journal reported, the Trump Administration successfully battled with hospitals to get them to disclose previously secret pricing data, in the hopes that disclosing this key information will benefit the U.S. health care system, notably…

DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog

U.S. rejects expert advice, keeps its diet-nutrition guidelines mostly the same

By Patrick A. Malone

January 5, 2021

https-www-protectpatientsblog-com-wp-content-uploads-sites-69-2021-01-artjanlett5-300x164-jpg

In yet another instance of disregarding fact-based advice, the Trump Administration, after hearing public comments and assembling a panel of diet and nutrition experts, has rejected their recommendations on how the federal government should update its counsel to Americans about optimizing their eating. The federal advisories, refreshed every five years by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, will stay mostly the same, with the administration turning away experts who told the government that it should urge…