Why it's hard for medicine to fix its mistakes

ProPublica offers an examination of the challenges hospitals face in adopting procedures to address medical errors.

ProPublica:  Why Can't Medicine Seem To Fix Simple Mistakes?
NYU's Langone Medical Center announced this week that it was adopting new procedures after the death of a 12-year old boy from septic shock. The hospital's emergency room sent Rory Staunton home in March and then failed to notify his doctor or family of lab results showing he was suffering from a raging infection.  In response to the case, which was closely covered by The New York Times, the hospital promised a bunch of basic fixes: ER doctors should be immediately notified of certain abnormal lab results and, if such results come in after a patient is sent home, the hospital should call the patient and his doctor (Weber, Ornstein and Allen, 7/20).

In other news related to health care quality --

Kaiser Health News: Capsules: Medicare IDs Few Hospitals As Outliers In Readmissions
Despite several years of concerted efforts, hospital readmission rates aren't dropping, the latest Medicare data show. Readmissions cost Medicare $17.5 billion in inpatient spending, with nearly 10 million Mediciare beneficiaries readmitted within 30 days for any cause, a rate of nearly one in five Medicare patients who enter a hospital (Rau, 7/23).