Short answer: No.

A recent study found that doctors who trained overseas and were not U.S. citizens when they entered medical school, had significantly lower mortality rates among their patients, compared to U.S. citizens trained in the U.S. and U.S.-born doctors who trained overseas.

The study looked at more than 244,000 hospitalizations in Pennsylvania, for patients suffering from heart attacks or congestive heart disease.

Unlike other safety-critical industries like aviation and nuclear power insist on having multiple precautions and fail-safes in place to ensure that workers can’t commit a fatal error over a momentary lapse such as hitting the wrong button.

But nurses and other health care providers have no such safety net when it comes to the tangle of tubes that may be hooked up to a typical patient. Rather than use color-coded tubing or incompatible hook-ups, most of the tubes used for blood, medication, food, etc. are identical.

That makes it all too easy for a nurse or other health care provider to accidentally grab the wrong line and push liquid nutrition into a vein or IV fluids into tubes meant to deliver oxygen.

Several hundred such errors are known to have lead to patients’ death (and many more caused severe injuries in patients who survived). Experts believe that due to under-reporting the actual numbers of patients affected are much higher. A 2006 survey found that 16% of all hospitals had experienced at least one feeding-tube-related error.

Why does this problem persist? Most experts blame lax oversight by the FDA and successful efforts by manufacturer organizations to slow efforts to create more stringent standards.

One basic move would be to make feeding tubes incompatible with tubes meant for the skin or veins. The FDA is currently reviewing that plan as well as related suggestions to make the tubing safer for both patients and their caregivers.

According to the study, patient deaths from medication errors spike 10% above normal rates each July — and only in counties with teaching hospitals. And the death rate increases proportionally with the number of teaching hospitals in the county.

The study’s authors recommend hospitals re-evaluate the responsibilities given to new residents, increase supervision and make an effort to improve education regarding medication safety.

The study was done by researchers from the University of California San Diego, who looked at more than 68 million death certificates issued in the U.S. between 1979 and 2006. They eventually focused on deaths due to medication errors.

The study found no similar spike in summertime deaths outside of a hospital, or deaths from other causes within hospitals.

The study was published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

A new pilot program has been developed for patients about to have non-emergency cardiac catherizations or angioplasties. The Web-based program pulls data from a national cardiovascular database to provide patients with personalized information on how likely they are to face specific risks.

The program is up and running at nine medical centers, including the Mayo Clinic, and is funded by a joint grant from the American Heart Association and the National Institutes of Health.

The need for a better way to educate patients on the risks they face is clear: A 2005 National Quality Forum report found that up to 70% of patients either don’t read their informed-consent forms or don’t understand what they do read. And nearly half of patients aren’t even clear on exactly what procedure they’re about to undergo.

Some experts are calling for even more detail to be provided to patients to anticipate questions patients should ask. Such information would cover questions that patients either may not think of, or may be too intimidated to ask, such as whether there are drug-based therapies that could be substituted for the procedure, how many times the physician has performed the procedure and how much the treatment will cost the patient out-of-pocket.

Three London hospitals started using eight “care bundles” to target common clinical issues (such as vomiting and surgical site infections) as part of the treatment for 13 specific diagnoses, ranging from senility and mental illness to COPD and heart failure.

Each care bundle consisted of a treatment checklist, space for medical notes, a way to flag affected patients and a tracer backing form. Each bundle was printed on one page, with a sticker to attach to the patient’s chart on the first day of treatment.

After a year of use, there were 255 fewer deaths at the hospitals than in the previous year — a 14.5% decrease. The targeted diagnoses accounted for 174 fewer deaths.

The study was published in the British Medical Journal.

Daniel Ryan, a 35-year-old father of two, arrived at Cape Cod Hospital on October 9th, to visit his wife as she recovered from surgery. According to multiple sources, Ryan attracted security’s attention for speeding and driving erratically in the hospital parking lot.

Details of the rest of the day are sketchy, and vary depending on the source.

According to the hospital, Ryan began to act “irrationally,” although to date, no further description of his behavior has been given. (The Ryan family denies he was a threat to anyone at the hospital.)

At some point, police were called to deal with Ryan. After the police left, hospital workers sent Ryan to the emergency department to wait for a psychiatric evaluation.

Ryan slipped out of the ED and began to run through the halls of the hospital as security gave chase and restrained him while waiting for the police to return.

His wife claims Ryan was caught and put in a chokehold.

According to the Boston Globe, a state official who reviewed surveillance video says Ryan tripped on a sheet that had been put over his head. Ryan fell, bringing the security guard down with him. The guard then turned Ryan over and sat on his chest.

Hospital officials deny a chokehold or other improper restraint techniques were used.

What is known is that Ryan fell unconscious while still restrained, was admitted to the hospital and eventually had to be put on life support. He died three weeks later.

The inquest

Ryan’s death was ruled a homicide, meaning that his death occurred as a result of human actions. The state’s inquest will determine if those actions amounted to a crime.

The inquest will take place in June and be closed to the general public. The results of the inquest may be made public. However, even if evidence of criminal wrongdoing is found, it’s still up to the prosecutor to decide whether or not to take the case to the grand jury.

Cape Cod Hospital denies wrongdoing in the case, but has taken steps to improve security procedures and increase training for security staff.

ECRI recently released its report on the 10 top technology hazards for 2010. The report, originally published in Health Devices, is based on information from ECRI’s database and investigations of medical device incidents.

The good news: Most of the problems listed below are preventable with proper staff training and device maintenance. ECRI says the top 10 hazards — and the reasons they happen — are:

1. Cross-contamination from flexible endoscopes. This is usually caused by failure to follow appropriate sterilization procedures or using damaged equipment.
2. Alarm hazards. Alarms may be turned off or ignored by staff who don’t understand their importance, or the alarms may not be heard if they aren’t set appropriately.
3. Surgical fires. Although not frequent, when they happen, they’re often deadly. They generally occur in oxygen-enriched environments.
4. CT radiation risks. CT scans have undeniably benefited innumerable patients. But they contain a relatively high radiation dose. It’s estimated that CT use causes approximately 6,000 cancers each year. To minimize risks, ECRI advises adjusting scanning protocol to minimize doses, and to use CT only when the benefits outweigh the risks.
5. Retained devices and fragments. Retained devices are most common during surgery if staffers don’t follow surgical device counting procedures. Fragments left behind can occur during surgery and other treatments if a piece of equipment is damaged. Visual inspection of the device before use and after removal should prevent the problem.
6. Needlesticks and sharps injuries. Improved training and awareness that needlestick prevention devices aren’t foolproof are staffers’ best tools to prevent this issue.
7. Problems with computerized equipment and systems. While hardware and software issues can often be resolved without damaging patient care, if they aren’t caught quickly, they can lead to a variety of potentially  harmful problems including improper processing of images and data, delayed or misapplied treatments, alarm malfunctions, etc.
8. Surgical stapler hazards. Another useful tool that can malfunction or be used carelessly and wind up harming patients. Staff should be reminded to be familiar with each stapler device that may be used, ensure the staple cartridges and stapler used are compatible, and that the stapler is positioned correctly.
9. Ferromagnetic objects when MRIs are being taken. This is another easily preventable error. Staff must check the room for items such as wheelchairs and even personal objects that can become flying projectiles around the MR device. Similarly, patients must be thoroughly screened for implanted devices that may be magnetic. (Remember: Patients won’t always know how many implants they have or what material they are made of.)
10. Fiberoptic light-source burns. Touted as “cold” light sources, fiberoptic lights used on endoscopes, headlamps and other devices do indeed give off heat. If left on a patient without shutting off the light source, even an LED can cause a serious burn. If connected incorrectly, the lights can overheat and catch fire.

Download ECRI’s entire report here.

An additional monitor at the patient’s bedside had been turned off the night before by an unidentified person.

The patient, who was not identified in the report, was in the hospital following surgery. The patient had a history of cardiac problems and was waiting for implantation of a pacemaker. An investigation into the death showed that the patient was active early in the morning, until his/her heart rate started to fall at 9:53 a.m.

Since no one noticed the central alarms, and the bedside monitor was turned off, no one checked on the patient until 10:16 a.m., when a nurse entered for a routine test.

By then, the patient was unresponsive.

In response to the incident, Mass General has disabled the off switches on alarms, assigned a nurse specifically to monitor alarms at the central station and installed more speakers so nurses can hear alarms even when not at the station.

The research was done by reporters for The Boston Globe, based on data compiled by the CMS.

According to the report, nationwide, nearly 19% of residents in nursing homes who were receiving drugs for anxiety, schizophrenia and other mental illnesses didn’t have the condition they were being treated for. In some states, the figure was closer to 25%.

More troubling than the waste of unneeded prescriptions: Patients who suffer from dementia face a higher risk of death from many of these drugs, as well as other significant side effects like increased confusion, weight gain, fatigue and sedation.

Open to debate: Are some cases of early dementia being misdiagnosed as mental illness? Are doctors just getting creative with the off-label use of these drugs? Or is it simply sometimes easier to give out prescriptions for each symptom — and never reevaluate the appropriateness of the care?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

That’s the conclusion of a new study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The researchers studied 69 million discharge records from 2006 for hospitals in 40 states.

According to the study, patients who developed pneumonia stayed in the hospital an average of 14 extra days. Their increased treatment costs were approximately $46,000 per patient. Of those patients, 11% ultimately died from the infection.

Patients who acquired sepsis stayed in the hospital an extra 11 days, at a cost of an additional $33,000. The infection was fatal for 20% of patients.

The study was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.