With preeclampsia affecting 10% of all pregnancies and rates rising by 25% in the past two decades, it is important to test your knowledge and ensure that all your patients have a strong understanding of the dangers of preeclampsia. This is part II of a two-part series. Part I focused on definitions, risks, prevention and diagnosis of preeclampsia; part II focuses on HELLP syndrome, treatment, eclampsia, future risk and resources.
With preeclampsia affecting 10% of all pregnancies and rates rising by 25% in the past two decades, it is important to test your knowledge and ensure that all your patients have a strong understanding of the dangers of preeclampsia. This blog will be divided into a two-part series. Part I focuses on definitions, risks, prevention and diagnosis of preeclampsia; part II focuses on HELLP syndrome, preeclampsia treatment, eclampsia, future risk and resources.
Since we recently laid out an exercise mapping clinical risks to frequent diagnosis-related claims in Emergency Medicine, we're circling back to recommend a risk mitigation exercise for another area of high risk medicine, Obstetrics.
A recent The Doctors Company analysis identified the most frequent obstetric claims as:
When creating a loss prevention program, obstetrics (OB) is a logical place to focus. It tends to be one of the riskiest specialties in medicine. Here we’ll highlight the research that points to why OB remains a focal point of organizational leadership and discuss the three attributes a loss prevention program in OB should have.
As the healthcare industry constantly evolves and “return on investment” remains a focus, it is becoming more imperative that risk managers allocate their budgets in areas that have the greatest impact on mitigating claims and litigation.
Fortunately, The Sullivan Group has the luxury of working with many large, sophisticated, self-insured hospital systems as well as smaller single-site facilities and physician groups. This experience has helped us identify four key areas that an organization should consider when developing its loss prevention strategy.
Malpractice claims continue to plague the specialty of Obstetrics. In the 2015 ACOG Survey on Professional Liability, a total of 4,294 physicians responded; 73.6% had at least one claim filed against them during their careers. There were 1,117 total claims reported by the surveyed OB-GYN physicians, with 63.5% of these claims involving obstetric care, and the remaining 36.5% involving gynecological care.
Dr. Mary Smith, the Chair of the Obstetrics and Gynecology department at County Hospital, was en route to a meeting with Dr. John Bart, Chief Medical Officer. The purpose of the meeting was to review patient complaints originating out of her service. While waiting for the elevator, Dr. Smith was hurriedly approached by an obviously distressed Susan Jones, the Labor & Delivery head nurse.
