Quality issues: Patient safety and physicians' well-being

Medscape investigates the intersection between patient safety initiatives and how physicians practice medicine.  

Medscape: Will Patient Safety Initiatives Harm Physicians?
Peer review, the patient safety method designed to identify ineffective, unethical, or impaired physicians, can help improve the delivery of medical care, provide risk-management lessons, and lead to improved policies and procedures. At the same time, some doctors and hospital administrators have expressed concern that peer review produces fodder for civil or criminal lawsuits against physicians and healthcare institutions (Kern, 3/9).

In other news related to health care quality, researchers find that older men treated for cancer fare well at Veterans Health Administration hospitals.

Reuters: Cancer Patients Do Well At Veterans' Hospitals
Older men treated for cancer at Veterans Health Administration hospitals do just as well, if not better, than men covered by Medicare, a new study suggests. That finding is a testament to massive changes in the organization of the VHA started in the mid-1990s that made patient care more coordinated, strengthened preventive care and allowed medical mistakes to be spotted faster, researchers said (Pittman, 3/9).