Florida Doctors Fined for Treating Wrong Patient
It’s hard to believe this happens, but it does.
Two doctors have reached a settlement with the Florida Board of Medicine after they allegedly treated the wrong patients at the wrong hospital rooms in two separate incidents. A nephrologist of Fort Myers, Florida, is facing a fine of $5,000 and a Surgeon of St. Petersburg, Florida, was fined $10,000.
The agreements to settle were reached between attorneys for the doctors and the Florida Department of Health. In the nephrologist’s case, the Associated Press reports there was no permanent harm to the patient, however, we don’t know the outcome of the other case. Both of the situations were caught by alert nurses.
Thankfully, the nurses saw the problems and were not afraid or intimidated to speak up. They are truly life savers.
A newly released report says that there will be 200,000 fatalities from hospital errors and infections this year, and they are mostly preventable.
Hearst Newspapers, in a national reporting effort, “Dead by Mistake,” finds medical errors happen all too frequently and there is a lack of systemic reform underway to ensure patient safety.
Ten years ago another federal report, “To Err is Human,” said that medical error could be improved and showed how to cut errors in half. Actually, Hearst reporters found the rate of medical error is increasing. Doctors regularly make errors such as the doctors above, confused about who to treat and what to treat them for. Other problems involve hospital infection, failure to color-code medical tubes, illegible handwriting, and prescription errors.
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