Category: Public Health

doctor and patient talk

The non-capture capture of “patient voice.” Isn’t it ironic?

Paul C. McLean Leave a comment

Register here for this weeks’s event, “Putting Patients at the Center of Research: Opportunities and Challenges for Ethical and Regulatory Oversight”

In a previous life I was a headline writer, so I have to give props for the title of this Friday’s Petrie-Flom panel: “Patients and Conflict of Interest: How Can We Keep the Patient’s Voice from Being ‘Captured’?

That is, how do you avoid “capturing” the patient voice when “capturing” the patient voice is the whole point of Patient Centered Outcomes Research? And yet this is a central challenge to bringing expertise unique to the receiving end of medicine and research into all levels of the process.

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Adverse Health Event Reporting in Minnesota a Valuable Tool

John Tingle Leave a comment

By John Tingle

doctors performing surgery
Medical errors are a common cause of death globally. (thinkpanama/flickr)

“Medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States,” says a new report by the World Health Organization. And in the United Kingdom, “recent estimations show that on average, one incident of patient harm is reported every 35 seconds.”

Patient safety remains an issue of concern for all countries across the globe. But by observing what other countries do and report about patient safety we can avoid the costly mistake of trying to reinvent the wheel when information is already available about important trends.

The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) have recently published their 14th Annual Public Report on Adverse Health Events in Minnesota. The report contains a lot of detailed patient safety information, analysis, and trends which will be of use to health carers and patient safety policy developers everywhere.

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The Health Imperative: Reunite Migrant Children with their Parents

Gali Katznelson Leave a comment

By Gali Katznelson

Japanese family awaits evacuation 1942
A Japanese family awaits an evacuation bus to an internment camp in 1942. Children who spent time in the camps have high incidence of trauma and health problems, studies have shown. Photo via US National Archives.

Former first lady Laura Bush published an op-ed in the Washington Post where she reminded us that today’s mass detention centers for children whose parents are accused of illegally crossing the border is a public health crisis — one we have seen before.

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a pile of vaccine vials and a needle

Long Overdue: Check Out the Vaccine Resources Library for Expert Witnesses

Dorit Reiss Leave a comment

By Dorit Reiss, Stanley A. Plotkin, Paul A. Offit

A new tactic has emerged in a few recent family law vaccination cases: using arguments created by the anti-vaccine movement.

Lack of familiarity with anti-vaccine claims can trip up even the most qualified expert. But a new resource library at the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia aims to combat anti-vaccine rhetoric and by giving experts the information they need to respond.

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Patient Safety and Emergency Room Care in the NHS

John Tingle Leave a comment

By John Tingle

UCL A&E entrance
Pedestrian entrance to the Accident and Emergency Unit at University College Hospital as viewed from the pavement on the Euston Road. (Amanda Lewis/Thinkstock)

In the UK, emergency and urgent care patients visit the A & E (Accident and Emergency) units of local hospitals (known as ERs in the U.S.) A & E service provision is the public face of the NHS. It is seen by many as the bellwether of the national health care system and the basis on which its performance is judged.

The Health and Social Care Regulator of England, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), which maintains important patient safety and health quality reviews, has recently published a report on A & E urgent care that found that the 2017-2018 winter season saw an unprecedented demand for emergency services, continuing a year-over-year increase. The number of emergency admissions has grown by 42 percent over the last 12 years, adding pressure to the NHS.

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image of the conference hall

Beyond Disadvantage: Photos from the Petrie-Flom Annual Conference

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

At last week’s Petrie-Flom Center Annual Conference, “Beyond Disadvantage: Disability, Law, and Bioethics,” discussed a number of topics related to the “mere difference” vs. “bad difference” disability theory debate.

Over the course of the day, six panels of experts shared their research and views on topics ranging from health care as eugenics to epistemic injustice to organ donation.

We will have the videos of the event soon, but in the meantime, enjoy the tweets from #rethinkingdisability and some photos from throughout the day by photographer Martha Stewart.

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2018 Petrie-Flom Center Annual Conference: Beyond Disadvantage: Disability, Law, and Bioethics

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

2018 Petrie-Flom Center Annual Conference: Beyond Disadvantage: Disability, Law, and Bioethics
June 1, 2018 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East ABC (2036)
Harvard Law School, 1585 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA

“Congress acknowledged that society’s accumulated myths and fears about disability and disease are as handicapping as are the physical limitations that flow from actual impairment.” Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., School Bd. of Nassau, Fl. v. Arline, 480 U.S. 273 (1987).

The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School is pleased to announce plans for our 2018 annual conference, entitled: “Beyond Disadvantage: Disability, Law, and Bioethics.” This year’s conference is organized in collaboration with the Harvard Law School Project on Disability.

Conference Description

Historically and across societies people with disabilities have been stigmatized and excluded from social opportunities on a variety of culturally specific grounds. These justifications include assertions that people with disabilities are biologically defective, less than capable, costly, suffering, or fundamentally inappropriate for social inclusion. Rethinking the idea of disability so as to detach being disabled from inescapable disadvantage has been considered a key to twenty-first century reconstruction of how disablement is best understood.

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Are Ordeals a Viable Way to Improve Health Care Delivery?

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Thomas W. Feeley

We constantly hear that the American health care system is broken and badly in need of repair. Our system provides poor value in that our per capita spending is more than any other nation in the world and yet we do not have the best health outcomes.

For many years, incremental solutions have been brought forward as solutions to our health care delivery problem. Approaches such as using evidence-based guidelines, focusing on patient safety, requiring prior authorization of expensive procedures, making patients pay as customers, adopting lean, six-sigma, electronic records, and using care coordinators, to name just a few, have failed to solve the problem.

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