Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Fresh on the heels of a study about error rates in a Romanian hospital, now we've got a new study about pre-analytical error rates at a Chinese hospital:
Corrected reports in laboratory medicine in a Chinese University hospital for 3 years, Liu X, Jiang Y, Zeng R, Zaho H, Clin Chem Lab Med 2014;52(4):e57-e59
Want to guess how many errors this lab experienced out of 1.1 million test reports in 2012?
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
We've all heard the infamous quote now over a decade and a half old: that US hospitals kill between roughly 40,000 and 90,000 patients each year. This was an estimate courtesy of the Institute of Medicine report "To Err Is Human" which made the dire performance of hospitals knowledge that even the general public could understand.
But more recently, studies have been tracking the adverse event rates much more closely. A recent NEJM paper followed four conditions from 2005 to 2011.
Of these four conditions, which do you think has the best Sigma performance when it comes to the occurrence of adverse events?
A. Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI)
B. Congestive Heart Failure
C. Pneumonia
D. (other) Conditions Requiring Surgery
The answer, after the jump...
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A recent New York Times Sunday editorial focused on the deplorable state of medical device regulation. We simply can no longer trust FDA clearances, particularly 510ks:
Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
The third year of Medicare penalties has been meted out. This year hospitals were penalized for avoidable complications such as various types of infections, blood clots, bed sores, falls, and new to the list this year, the prevalence of two types of bacteria resistant to drugs.
Do you want to guess the percentage of injuries that impacted patients in US healthcare?
- 15%
- 11.5%
- 1.15%
- 0.115%
The answer, after the jump...
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
The IATA (International Air Transport Association), whose 260 member airlines comprise 83% of global air travel, released their statistics on 2015 airline safety.
Can you guess how safe it is to travel? What was the global jet accident rate?
- 0.32 per million flights
- 0.22 per million flights
- 0.12 per million flights
- 0 per million flights
The answer, after the jump...
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Can you guess just how bad US healthcare is at making the right diagnosis?
Is the error rate in the US related to diagnosis
- 5%?
- 10%?
- 6 to 17%?
- all of the above?
The answer, after the jump...
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
An interesting abstract was published at the Paris IFCC meeting. It detailed the EQA performance of a set of 12 public laboratories in Catalonia. Can you guess what the failure rate for these labs for biochemistry EQA?
- 14.5%
- 14%
- 3%
- none of the above
The answer, after the jump...
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
As some of you know, this year's new "Westgard Wear" novelty was not a piece of clothing, nor a Bobblehead, but instead an 8GB USB thumb drive:
But if you look at this picture of two of the thumb drives, is there anything that jumps out at you?
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