The American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) recently released their 2014 Emergency Room Report Card and the grade is not good – the national results were a D+. The study found that, nationally, the emergency care environment had actually gotten worse since the last report card was issued in 2009.

Four of the categories the study measured include:

Access to Emergency Care – The national grade for this category was a D-. There are many issues that emergency care environments cannot seem to overcome, including the amount of time patients have to wait for emergency room care, shortages in on-call specialists and other healthcare workforce members, and the increasing costs for care. Twenty-one states received F’s in this category.

Quality and Safety Patient Environment – This category received a C for its overall grade. The study points out that there have been new systems and protocols introduced to improve life-saving treatment and promote better functioning emergency rooms. Ten states received F’s in this category.

Public Health and Injury Prevention – The overall national grade for this category is a C. There has been no improvement in this section since 2009. It is the one category where states can take the initiatives to be pro-active in implementing programs to help reduce the need for emergency care. An example of this cited by the ACEP would be immunization programs for children and senior citizens. Ten states received F’s in this category.

Disaster Preparedness – This category saw a slight decrease since the last report card and has fallen to a C-. The ACEP contributes this decrease to disparities in each state’s hospital systems when it comes to the capacity of the hospitals and how prepared its personnel are for disasters. Thirteen states received F’s in this category.

If you have suffered permanent disabilities because of a physician’s error or misdiagnosis, you may be entitled to financial compensation for your pain and loss. Contact a Westport medical malpractice attorney to find out what legal options you may have.

The New York Times recently reported on the enormous increase in the use of medical imaging and the impact that increase has had in the number of cancer deaths in the last two decades.

Cancer is the number two cause of death in the United States, but it is quickly catching up to and may soon surpass the leading cause of death – heart disease. Medical imaging – particularly CT scans – exposes the patient to high doses of radiation. According to the Mayo Clinic, a CT scan performs by    combining “a series of X-ray views taken from many different angles and computer processing to create cross-sectional images of the bones and soft tissues inside your body.”

The radiation from a CT scan (also referred to as a cat scan) is 100 to 1,000 times higher than X-rays. Many doctors have always concluded that the benefits of using CT scans for diagnostic purposes far exceeded the risks of that exposure. Today, however, in a 2009 study, the National Council on Radiation Protection & Measurements (NCRP) reported that there will be an extra 29,000 cases of cancer caused from CT scans performed in the year 2007. And 14,500 of those cancer cases will be terminal.

In another study, the NCRP also reports that in 1980 there were 3 million scans performed. Today, there are 62 million CT scans performed annually.

The correlation between the radiation in CT scans and cancer has been documented in several studies. Just one CT scan exposes a person to enough radiation that could cause cancer and has been compared as the same amount of radiation exposure as people were exposed to in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many who later died of cancer.

Research has also revealed that children are even more at risk than adults. They are three times more likely to develop brain cancer or leukemia from CT scan radiation exposure.

Medical experts say that better guidelines and standards need to be established on the use of medical imaging. They also say that better oversight is needed. Currently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is only responsible of the approval of scanners, but does not have any jurisdiction on how they are used.

If you have suffered injuries or illness brought on by medical error, contact a qualified Westport medical malpractice attorney today to find out what kind of civil options you may have for pain and loss.

Kaiser Health News is reporting on a new Medicare program that tracks the results of hip and knee replacement surgeries. Medicare has released the names of the 97 best and the 95 worst hospitals to have these procedures at.

Over 500,000 Medicare patients have either hip or knee replacement surgeries each year. In 2010 alone, between Medicate patients and those with private health insurance, more than 332,000 patients had hip replacement surgery (costing $8 billion) and 700,000 patients had knee replacement surgery (costing $12 billion).

The tracking system looked at operations performed from June 2009 through July 2012. It looked at how often patients were readmitted within a month after replacement surgery. Serious complications from the surgery, like infections, blood clots, problems with the replacement joint or death, were also tracked. An average was determined by Medicare, and most hospitals fell in that average. Two hospitals from Connecticut fell on that list, with one falling into the best category and one falling into the worst category.

Several of the hospitals that fell in the worst list complained about the procedure that was used to determine these results. They said that the results were outdated given the time-frame that Medicare used to track results. New technologies and new treatment models were two examples of how treatments have improved over the past year or two.

Medicare is going to add the results of this tracking as part of its formula when deciding to penalize hospitals. After conducting a similar tracking on readmission rates for patients with heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia, the federal agency has already penalized more than 2000 hospitals nationwide by paying those hospitals less. Once these new figures are factored in, a hospital could lose as much as 3 percent per patient stay.

If you’ve had side-effects or injuries from joint replacement surgery, contact an experienced Westport medical malpractice attorney today to find out what compensation you may be entitled to for pain and loss.