Current Events

As more and more shopping takes place online, the safety of consumers’ data is increasingly in the hands of online retailers and websites. While these corporations profit from the data we entrust to them, they are increasingly taking steps to shield themselves in confusing, hard-to-find legalese that gives consumers little or no recourse if their information is leaked or misused, or even if consumers are cheated by online merchants.

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Trinity Industries, a maker of highway guardrails that are suspected of having a dangerous defect, and a whistle-blower have been ordered to enter mediation after the company lost a $175 million verdict for defrauding the United States government.

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Like the others in the clinical trial, Patient No. 11561004 already had tried one treatment for his advanced kidney cancer, but it didn't work. So the 69-year-old man volunteered to try an unproven drug that offered some hope he might live longer.

Less than four months after going on the drug known as Inlyta, the man — identified only by age and a number in an FDA review of the clinical trial— developed severe abdominal pain, was admitted to the hospital and died that day from gastrointestinal bleeding.

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As disease investigators sought to ensure on Friday that they had found and isolated everyone who came into contact with New York City;s first Ebola patient when he was sick and infectious, doctors treating the man were discussing using experimental treatments to help him battle the virus.

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Johnson & Johnson's ($JNJ) Janssen unit is recalling 13,500 bottles of its top-selling anticoagulant Xarelto because of microbial contamination discovered in a sample.

According to a recall notice in the latest FDA Enforcement Report, the drugmaker said that it confirmed that a sales sample of the drug was contaminated after a customer complaint, and so initiated a nationwide, voluntary recall. The company reported that the product came from a plant in Gurabo, Puerto Rico. The plant was among four on the island that J&J slated two years ago for $225 million in upgrades.

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ORLANDO, Fla. — Hien Tran lay dying in intensive care this month after a car accident, as detectives searched for clues about the apparent stab wounds in her neck.

An unlikely breakthrough arrived in the mail a week after she died from her injuries. It was a letter from Honda urging her to get her red Accord fixed, because of faulty air bags that could explode.

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Toyota Motor Corp. (TM) is advising U.S. owners to keep passengers out of the front seats of several models until dealers can repair defective air bags, four months after taking similar actions in Japan.

Toyota issued the public warning as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration stepped up efforts to reach at least 4.7 million motorists driving with potentially faulty air bags. The carmaker yesterday added to its air-bag recalls for the second time since June, when the company joined Honda Motor Co. (7267), Nissan Motor Co. and Mazda Motor Corp. in instructing dealers in Japan to disable passenger-side air bags and tell owners to prohibit passengers from sitting in the front seat.

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Not long ago, I heard a respected senior colleagues recount to a group of medical students and trainees the story of a patient who had dies under his care some 15 years earlier.  Afterward, he had spent hours talking with the family, trying, he said, "to be as kind to them as I possibly could." The family had been grateful for all his efforts, but my colleagues still struggled to even tell the story.

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Roughly every eight minutes from 2002 through 2012, a child in the U.S. experienced a medication mistake, according to a new study of calls to poison control hotlines.

The number and rate of reported medication mistakes rose during the 11-year study, except for cough and cold medicines, the researchers report in the journal Pediatrics.

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The Harm Across the Board rate gives hospital boards and C-suites a single safety metric to track reductions in patient harm over time.

At Lea Regional Medical Center in Hobbs, N.M., every internal meeting begins with a safety moment. Whether a front-line staff huddle, a C-suite financial review or the convening of the 11-member community board, spending a few moments on safety at the top of each meeting serves as a reminder of the 201-bed hospital’s core mission: delivering the highest quality medical care to its community.

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What Can You Do?  Be Involved in Your Health Care

1. The single most important way you can help to prevent errors is to be an active member of your health care team.

That means taking part in every decision about your health care. Research shows that patients who are more involved with their care tend to get better results. Some specific tips, based on the latest scientific evidence about what works best, follow.

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