Critical Nurse Consulting LLC

04/26/2012

Access to a medical record may be electronically limited. It is possible to determine who has accessed an electronic chart.

04/11/2012

I wrote a letter to the editor of the Columbus Dispatch when this news of the Dayton VA Dental Clinic first was released to state that this information should be front page news...our veterans always deserve our best...nothing less.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has paid $940,000 to settle medical malpractice lawsuits stemming from patient deaths at the Dayton (Ohio) VA Medical Center between 2005 and 2008.

04/11/2012

The following information is from Diederich Healthcare's analysis of medical malpractice payouts in 2011 as recorded by the National Practitioner Data Bank.

03/28/2012

Excellent article with helpful hints to capture the 'deal' you are going after.

Describes how legal nurse consultants can lseal the deal in 3 situations.

03/24/2012

By Stacey Naggiar and Kerri ZimmerNBC News When John Harrison checked into a Texas hospital in 2009 for rotator cuff surgery, he thought that after a six-week recovery period, he’d be as good as new. But two weeks after the operation, the 63 year-old was experiencing …

03/20/2012

Excellent tip on how to hyperlink...made easy!

Describes how legal nurse consultants create chronologies that hyperlink to PDF documents.

03/02/2012

Emergency physicians are speaking out against basing coverage denials on final diagnosis codes rather than symptoms, reported MedPage Today. Specifically, the American College of Emergency Physicians Read more...

03/02/2012

Critical Nurse Consulting LLC

With tech innovation moving at warp speed, corporations need to frequently update data management and compliance policies to keep up with new trends, says John Martin, partner at Nelson Mullins. The iPad is a case in point, and he sees that it's time for in-house counsel to take note of the informat...

01/23/2012

Interesting article by Dana Jolly and posted by Pat Iyer

Legal nurse consultants: How to lose a client in one report

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Pat Iyer

Want repeat business? Here are some report “don’ts”.

1. Striking the wrong key
Relying on the computer to function as the only proof reader of your LNC report is sure to miss a few common typographical or grammatical errors. An example I frequently see is the wrong word being typed, i.e. “form” when “from” should appear. A lack of attention to detail is guaranteed to have your client second guessing his request to have you review the critical evidence in his case.

2. Blind side your client
Do not include any references: source document, Bates numbers, literature citations. You don’t want your client to easily find the critical document or the article that supports the case theory. Attorneys really do want to search through all those medical records themselves.

3. One and done
Just provide the facts and your conclusion. Don’t include recommendations for the next steps the client should take. After all, the report speaks for itself. Attorneys, being familiar with the provision of health care, can easily identify just the specialty needed for an expert review. All attorneys understand the difference between a diagnostic radiologist and an interventional radiologist, for example.

4. Missing the point
Make your conclusion hard to find. Place it anywhere but the beginning of your report. Attorneys love to read the whole report before they learn what your conclusions are. Placing your conclusion at the beginning of your report with emphasis formatting would make the attorney less inclined to read your entire report, something to be avoided at all times.

5. TMI*
When in doubt, include it. It is important the attorney is made aware of all potential breaches in the nursing standard of care regardless of the relevance to the allegations.

* too much information

Dana Jolly, BSN, RN, LNCC is president of Jolly Consulting, LLC, a national legal nurse consultancy. She is a published author and frequent lecturer on legal nurse and clinical topics. To learn more about what you can do to present a polished, accurate report, join Angie Duke-Haynes, Pat Iyer, and Dana Jolly on February 1 and 8, 2012 for a webinar course, Polish Your Writing Skills.

01/07/2012

Happy New Year to all...

10/27/2011

EHRs may reduce medical liability for some errors, but could create new forms of medical liability and expose existing liability issues, says report.

10/14/2011

We can all use some coaching... this article was found in Outpatient Surgery Magazine Oct 13, 2011.
Go to Outpatient Surgery for the full story @ www.outpatientsurgery.net

Do Surgeons Need a Coach?
No matter how well-trained people are, few can sustain their best performance on their own.
Published: October 13, 2011

Do Surgeons Need a Coach? No matter how well-trained people are, few can sustain their best performance on their own.
Amazing things happened when Atul Gawande, MD, asked a surgeon under whom he'd trained during his residency to come into his operating room and coach him on his surgical technique. Read Dr. Gawande's essay, "Coaching a Surgeon: What Makes Top Performers Better?" in the Oct. 3 issue of The New Yorker magazine.

Dan O'Connor

Illustration courtesy of The New Yorker.

Outpatient Surgery Magazine is a national monthly magazine for physicians, nurses and administrators involved in the rapidly growing field of outpatient surgery. The publication reaches individuals involved in the operation of freestanding ambulatory surgery centers, hospital outpatient surgery depa...