Current Events

Infections and other medical errors that harm patients in hospitals have declined significantly, the Obama administration said Tuesday, hailing the progress as a sign that new efforts to improve patients' safety are bearing fruit.

From 2010 to 2013, so-called hospital-acquired conditions declined 17%, according to a new report from the Department of Health and Human Services.

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Washington — The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is opening an investigation into whether Graco Children’s Products Inc. delayed a recall of 6.1 million child seats — the largest in U.S. history and the latest example of the stepped-up posture of the auto safety agency.

“The department is committed to ensuring that parents have peace of mind knowing that the car seat in which they are placing their child and their trust is safe and reliable,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “Any delays by a manufacturer in meeting their obligations to report safety issues with the urgency they deserve, especially those that impact the well-being of our children, erodes that trust and is absolutely unacceptable.”

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General Motors is recalling 273,182 midsize SUV's and Buick LaCrosse sedans in the U.S. because the low-beam headlights can cut out, temporarily or permanently.

Besides 2006 to 2009 LaCrosse sedans, the recall includes a raft of SUVs under various GM brands. They include the 2006 and 2007 Chevrolet TrailBlazer and 2006 TrailBlazer EXT; 2006 and 2007 GMC Envoy and 2006 Envoy XL; 2006 and 2007 Buick Rainier; 2006 to 2008 Saab 9-7X and 2006 to 2008 Isuzu Ascender midsize SUVs.

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HCA Holdings Inc. (HCA), which operates 280 hospitals and surgery centers in the U.S. and England, will stop the use of a minimally invasive surgical device that destroys growths in a woman’s uterus after U.S. regulators said it may spread cancer.

HCA implemented the ban after the Food and Drug Administration on Nov. 24 updated its guidance on the devices, called power morcellators, Jeff Prescott, a spokesman for the Nashville, Tennessee-based company said yesterday in an e-mail.

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As the number of medical-device recalls has rapidly increased, so has the complexity of the recalls. That is raising questions about safety and risks for hospitals that mostly still track and locate faulty products manually.

There were 1,190 recalls of medical devices in 2012, nearly double the 604 recalls reported to the Food and Drug Administration in 2003.

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The settlement between the hospital where Thomas Eric Duncan received treatment for the deadly Ebola virus and his surviving relatives remains confidential. Yet, the settlement illustrates some of the legal limitations of the state’s tort reform law.

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DETROIT — General Motors pressured a supplier to continue producing a substandard ignition switch a decade ago and leaned on the company to improve it even though it could not be fixed, a newly disclosed email shows.

The switch, made by Delphi, has become the focus of a safety crisis at G.M. and is linked to at least 33 deaths and dozens of injuries.

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Honda Motor Co. (7267) said it failed to report more than 1,700 claims of injury or death involving its cars to U.S. regulators, a violation that would be one of the biggest in history and could lead to a fine of $35 million.

In a synopsis of an internal review filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Honda yesterday blamed the underreporting on “inadvertent data entry or computer programming errors” that spanned 11 years. NHTSA hasn’t made the audit documents public yet as it continues an investigation.

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Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. has recalled 68,000 bottles of the antidepressant Effexor (venlafaxine), in the second recall of the drug this year, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said.

In both instances, the recalled drug was manufactured at the Indian generic drug maker’s plant in Halol in the state of Gujarat. The drugs were recalled after they failed to dissolve properly in quality tests, the Wall Street Journal reports. The earlier recall, in June, was for 252,000 bottles of Effexor.

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The Food and Drug Administration strengthened its warnings Monday against the use of a controversial uterine surgical technique, recommending that doctors avoid using laparoscopic power morcellators to remove uterine growths in the vast majority of women because of the risk of spreading hidden cancers.

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When it was learned this year that General Motors had long failed to notify regulators and the public about fatal ignition-switch defects, the outrage in Congress was bipartisan. Recent reports in The New York Times that the Japanese manufacturer Takata hid deadly airbag defects are also sure to inspire rebukes from members of both parties. Takata has rebutted the reports, but lawmakers have appropriately scheduled a hearing for Thursday and called for a criminal inquiry by the Justice Department.

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