Moral courage in medicine--disclosing medical error

Medical error is an inevitable occurrence that stresses the relationship between healthcare professionals and their patients. The number of errors is shocking; so too, is the revelation that few medical errors are routinely disclosed. When healthcare providers fail to inform patients of harm-causing medical error, then trust in the patient/provider relationship is broken and many ethical challenges surface. To successfully restore trust and perhaps lower liability costs, healthcare providers must avoid pointing fingers and adopt a policy of honesty and full disclosure.     

Application of novel lossless compression of medical images using prediction and contextual error modeling

Conduction of tele-3D-computer assisted operations as well as other telemedicine procedures often requires highest possible quality of transmitted medical images and video. Unfortunately, those data types are always associated with high telecommunication and storage costs that sometimes prevent more frequent usage of such procedures. We present a novel algorithm for lossless compression of medical images that is extremely helpful in reducing the telecommunication and storage costs. The algorithm models the image properties around the current, unknown pixel and adjusts itself to the local image region. The main contribution of this work is the enhancement of the well known approach of predictor blends through highly adaptive determination of blending context on a pixel-by-pixel basis using classification technique. We show that this approach is well suited for medical image data compression. Results obtained with the proposed compression method on medical images are very encouraging, beating several well known lossless compression methods. The predictor proposed can also be used in other image processing applications such as segmentation and extraction of image regions.     

住院患者医疗收费差错原因分析与对策

目的减少住院患者医疗收费差错,降低费用差错引起的医患纠纷,提高患者满意度。方法通过抽查我院2014年1月~2015年1月的病历资料720份,其中发现收费差错病历162份,并对收费差错发生的原因进行分析。结果通过组织相关人员学习医疗收费标准,加大审核力度和及时指导,制定奖惩制度等管理措施,差错率显著降低,由实施改进方法前的22.5%降至改进后的10.58%。结论针对收费差错实施有效的管理措施,明显降低差错率的发生,提高了病人满意度。     

Epidemiology and prophylaxis of the hospital contamination of medical personnel with viruses of hepatitis B and C

Medical personnel is one of the main risk groups with respect to hospital infections for which hepatitis B and C are professional pathology. The degree of the risk of contamination of the personnel greatly depends on the character, urgency and duration of professional activity, accuracy in following the rules of personal safety while working with infected material, the proportion of patients contaminated with viruses of hepatitis B and C in specialized departments, the epidemiological danger of therapeutic and diagnostic methods, the possibility of reliable disinfection and sterilization of the equipment. In the system of measures aimed at preventing the infection of the medical personnel a special role belongs to the specific immunoprophylaxis of hepatitis B. Prolonged experience in the immunization of the medical personnel of a big hospital demonstrates a high immunological and epidemiological efficiency of the use of vaccine against hepatitis B, produced by the Research and Manufacturing Complex "Combiotech", Russia.