If you have suffered an illness or injury which requires medical care, you may already be feeling understandably disoriented as a result of your medical condition. If you have experienced an adverse event during the course of your medical care, you may be feeling even more dazed than you otherwise might. When the trust between medical professionals and patients is broken due to mistakes on the part of medical personnel, the fallout can be uniquely jarring. As a result, you may not feel qualified to make certain decisions about how you will ultimately respond to the harm that you are now suffering as a result of [...]

During a recent hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging, a serious patient safety allegation was raised by a panel of respected leaders on this very subject. This panel asserted that over the past 15 years, patient safety advances have been inconsistent, limited and sporadic in nature. Specifically, the panel noted that since the publication of the Institute of Medicine’s “To Err is Human” 15 years ago, patients continue to die and to sustain serious injuries due to preventable medical errors at devastating rates. Many hospital administrators take issue with this pronouncement. According to Modern Healthcare, numerous hospital groups contend that patient safety [...]