A top ten list that indicts an industry

Cheryl Clark over at HealthLeaders Media summarizes the annual ECRI report on the top 10 health care technology hazards. It is tempting to think of this as a report on technologies, but let's remember it is actually a report on how people use technologies.Here's the (drum-roll) list:1. Alarm hazards2. Infusion pump medication errors3. CT radiation exposures in pediatric patients4. Data integrity failures in EHRs and other health IT systems5. Occupational radiation hazards in hybrid ORs6. Inadequate reprocessing of endoscopes and surgical instruments7. Neglecting change management for network devices and systems8. Risks to pediatric patients from "adult" technologies 9. Robotic surgery complications due to insufficient training10. Retained devices and unretrieved fragmentsA few comments.  First, with regard to number 6, the only appropriate is "Eeew, that's disgusting!"Number 9 relates to Intuitive Surgery and its daVinci robot. I wonder if this is the first time that one company accounts for an entire category in the ECRI report. What a milestone that would represent!What is striking about the others is that there are work-flow remedies that could dramatically reduce these hazards. The fact that they remain on the list is an indictment of the clinical and administrative leaders in many American hospitals.
Source: Running a hospital - Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs