April 21, 2011
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) reports that traffic deaths in 2010 in the country fell to 32,788, the lowest number ever recorded, according to a story in USA Today. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) began keeping highway fatality deaths in 1949. The death rate of 1.09 per 100 million miles in 2010 is also the lowest on record. Compared to 2005, when 43,510 deaths were recorded, the latest figure represents a 25 percent drop in traffic fatalities. All of this is happening at a time when Americans are driving more than ever. So what is contributing to safer roads?
More attention is being paid to drunk driving. States have more check points and education efforts appear to be working. More people are wearing seat belts, the most effective safety device in an automobile. There is more enforcement of traffic safety laws, reports the NHTSA.
Florida is part of the five states in Region 4 which had a drop of 3 percent in traffic fatalities from 6,573 deaths in 2009 to 6,375 fatalities in 2010.
Region 1; which encompasses Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island; had the largest drop of 17.7 percent or 1,157 deaths. Region 2; which includes New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; had the lowest decline of 2.4 percent or 3,067 deaths.
Posted In: Automobile Accidents
March 21, 2011
New data from the consumer group, Public Citizen, finds that more than half of the time, state medical boards do not discipline doctors who commit some sort of medical malpractice as cited by the hospitals where they work. Public Citizen looked at 10,672 physicians listed in the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) who had their clinical privileges revoked or were facing some sort of licensing action by the state medical boards. Fifty-five percent of them, or 5,887, did not face any licensing action by the state, indicating that the medical board did not receive the disciplinary action information or failing to take action.
The bottom line is that many potentially dangerous doctors who have a history of medical malpractice, are going unchecked and leaving patients unprotected. The information was sent to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius urging the office to begin a state medical board investigation.
Of those doctors cited, more than 1,000 were noted to be incompetent, negligent, or committed malpractice, 605 were accused of substandard care, and 220 were cited as a danger to a patient’s health or safety. The violations were considered so striking that the hospitals took away clinical privileges permanently for 3,218 physicians, and 389 lost practicing privileges for more than one year.
Florida’s Dangerous Doctors
Florida is cited in the data for failing to take any disciplinary action against a doctor who had hospital privileges permanently revoked in 2002 and 10 medical malpractice actions between 1992 and 2009. Two patients died, a foreign object was left inside a patient, and another suffered from a misdiagnosis.
Florida was among the top four states for the number of physicians with one or more clinical privilege actions totaling 572, of which 63% faced no state medical board actions. Public Citizen sent the findings to Florida and 31 other states whose medical boards did not take action.
Posted In: Medical Malpractice
