I’m not prepared to break out into song with ‘Hakuna Matata’ (at least, not yet), but the circular nature of things in life is unmistakable: ironically, the path that my commitment to MRI safety has taken has also produced the unintended consequence of getting me ‘uninvited’ from the ACR’s MR Safety committee.
Let’s look at the circular path it took to arrive here… Click Here For The Rest Of The Story…
For a couple of months, at least, the FDA’s MAUDE database wasn’t displaying all of the accident narratives online… This appears to have been fixed!
A number of the MRI accident reports, when the narratives weren’t appearing, were little more than the name and mailing address of the MRI manufacturer. Today, if you want to read about the MR Technologist who had a pair of scissors magnetically-impelled into his forehead, you can do so. So Click Here If You’re Curious…
“Tweet, tweet” is usually all I hear from little birdies… but one little bird that flew past my office recently had a surprisingly large vocabulary and told me of new requirements that will be introduced in the forthcoming 2010 update to the ‘Guidelines for Design and Construction of Health Care Facilities’ (commonly referred to as ‘Guidelines’).
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Guidelines, they are the design requirements that are cited by the Joint Commission and, at last count, 42 of the 50 U.S. State Departments of Health. Technically, they aren’t a building code, but the function in almost the exact same way. For the first time, the Guidelines are going to have specific MRI suite design requirements for patient safety.
2010 Guidelines
Click Here To Read About The Specific MRI Safety Design Requirements…
That’s right. Yesterday, October 26th, the Colombini family formally accepted a settlement offer for the MRI vs. oxygen tank accident which killed their 6-year-old son in 2001. The settlement puts to rest 8 years of litigation resulting from the single largest MRI safety incident in the industry’s consciousness. And though precedent-setting verdicts won’t result, the dollar-value of the settlement will likely cause many MRI providers to sit up and take notice.
Just how much is the settlement? Click Here To Learn More About The Settlement…
(This is a continuation of my recommended MRI safety vendor itinerary, starting at the North Hall, which you can read about here.)
Our company, Mednovus, is making the annual pilgrimage to Chicago after Thanksgiving for the biggest of all radiology trade shows, the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) annual meeting. In my prior post I indicated why I thought MRI safety would be a ‘hot topic’ at this year’s RSNA, and gave an itinerary for the North Hall (the Philips Hall) for stops at relevant vendors.
Continuing on that original theme, and to facilitate your review of MRI safety products and vendors, I’d like to suggest an itinerary for visiting a select group of exhibitors, this time in Lakeside Center (Exhibit Hall D)…
Click Here To View The MR Safety Itinerary For Lakeside Center…
“Hello Orlando!”
“Hello Orlando!”
No, there’s not an echo in this posting. I’m simply rehearsing for two nearly-back-to-back presentations on MRI safety issues to different groups, both in Orlando, Florida, in the weeks ahead.
For those unfamiliar with the term, a ‘never event’ is a label used to describe an adverse event that is wholly avoidable by simply following established best practices. For example, if you have an accurate count of the surgical instruments before and after surgery, there should never be an event where the patient leaves the OR with a sponge or clamp sewn up inside of them. A retained surgical instrument, or wrong-site surgery, or bed-sores, or patient mis-identification, or medication errors are all examples of ‘never events’.
Some insurance payers are beginning to refuse reimbursement for care that is necessitated by certain ‘never events’, and that list is likely to grow. And while they may not always result in patient injury, I’d like to propose my own list of 5 MRI ‘never events’ which should at least trigger an investigation…
I like to keep my finger on the pulse of MRI accidents and safety issues. One consequence of this is that I frequent the FDA’s MAUDE database (MAUDE is a tortured acronym for medical device user-reported mishaps). I have long criticized the FDA for their half-hearted efforts at collecting MRI accident data (which, in fairness, appears to be as much a product of congressional limitations on the FDA’s power as anything else), but MAUDE has been the only national database for these accidents that is publicly accessible.
Every so often there is an MRI accident description that is so stunning that it sends a jolt through me, reminding me why I do what I do. This is the entry that I came across just two weeks ago…
OK, our yearlong economic near-catastrophe has had far-reaching effects and is a ready-made excuse for all sorts of evils in the world.
wife: “Honey, why didn’t you vacuum the living room like I asked?”
husband: “Well, in this time of economic uncertainty, I felt that it would be unwise to both use more electricity for something as superfluous as vacuuming, as well as hasten the demise of our vacuum by using it before it was absolutely necessary…”
But, in fact, economic conditions do have the outward appearances of being a contributing factor in increasing rates of MRI accidents. Click Here To Read How…