I know some people who don’t want to be hospitalized because of the possibility of contracting an infection. Well, it looks like hospitals have made some headway into reducing hospital infection rates, at least when it comes to invasive cases of MRSA, otherwise known as methicillin-resistant staph. A federal study looked at nine major metropolitan areas in the United States and concluded that MRSA rates declined about 16 percent from 2005 to 2008.

Another medical device manufacturer is held accountable for what a judge ruled to be a faulty product. The Mogen clamp, made by Mogen Circumcision Instruments, is used in circumcisions, and the manufacturer claims it is safe to use. Unfortunately, an infant lost the tip of his penis when it got caught in the clamp. The patient is permanently disfigured as a result. The New York judge awarded $10.8 million in compensatory and punitive damages. The award is meant to cover medical expenses as well as ongoing psychotherapy for the patient, who at three years of age is already self conscious about his deformity.

Now here’s something you don’t hear every day–a patient and his medical provider filed a lawsuit against a medical device manufacturer. The patient, Paramjit Singh, was undergoing heart bypass surgery in 2004 at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, WA, when a catheter in his right ventricle malfunctioned. The device overheated, and as a result, cooked and irreparably destroyed the ventricle. Surgeons were focused on another part of the heart and thus were unaware of the damage until the end of the surgery. Doctors were able to insert a mini artificial heart but believed the patient would probably die within a few hours.

There are plenty of nightmare stories about nursing homes and poor care, but it seems a jury in Humboldt County, California, has decided enough is enough. This week a jury awarded nearly $677 million in damages in a class-action lawsuit against Skilled Healthcare, one of the biggest nursing home providers in the nation. The decision came after a trial that lasted more than seven months.

The class-action lawsuit represented about 32,000 patients who received substandard care between 2003 and 2009. A California law requires each patient receive 3.2 nursing hours per day, a mandate Skilled Healthcare allegedly violated. Based in southern California, Skilled Healthcare has facilities in seven states totaling some 78 nursing homes, including five in Humboldt County.

Washington State’s Supreme Court just ruled that it is unconstitutional to require a 90-day waiting period for filing a lawsuit against a medical provider. In 2006 the state revamped its medical malpractice system and added the 90-day waiting period with the hope that disputes could be settled during this time and thus avoid going to court. The Washington Supreme Court believes, however, that the separation of powers between two arms of government, the legislative and judicial, is violated by this 90-day waiting period.

Last year a mentally ill patient in a medium-security ward at Oregon State Hospital lay dead in his hospital bed for several hours before anyone noticed. As a result, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a warning letter to the state indicating Oregon better shape up or risk getting sued by the DOJ. In addition, the State Office of Investigations and Training found the hospital was negligent in its care of the patient, Moises Perez.

A physician friend of mine once told me to avoid teaching hospitals in July. Why? Because that’s when teaching hospitals get a whole new roster of newbie medical residents. Now, I’m all about education and training, but do I want to be the guinea pig for these fresh-from-the-classroom residents? According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, this phenomenon is known as the “July effect.”

Oregonians who wish to investigate hospital infection rates can now do so, as the state is one of ten that now requires hospitals to publicly report them. Infections due to hospital exposure have risen across the nation, and Oregon officials are hoping that publicizing the rates will encourage hospitals to take measures to decrease the rate of infections and to educate patients.

The rates provide valuable information, but they shouldn’t be taken completely at face value. A small hospital with few infections might get an above-average rate based on the numbers. Also, some facilities specialize in patients with more critical cases, and those patients might be more susceptible to infections and other issues. Also, the data is reported by the hospitals themselves, so there is no third party to verify the accuracy of the rates.

The other day I read about a new system some local hospitals have been using in order to cut back on the number of hospital infections. It includes a lot of checks and balances and colleagues checking on one another. Sounds like a good idea, right? Well today I saw this article about how some VA hospitals are going to limit the types of surgeries that can be performed to hopefully decrease surgical deaths. Apparently some surgeries are too complicated to be performed at some VA hospitals. Patients requiring those surgeries will need to go elsewhere.

Here’s another case for the practically unbelievable files. A young Arizona man is suing University Physicians Healthcare because he claims his right testicle was unnecessarily removed. The story is Kenneth Irby went in for what he believed was going to be a routine biopsy on his right testicle. He asserts that the agreement with his doctor was that his right testicle would only be removed IF cancer were positively discovered. Because his testicle was indeed removed, Irby believed it had been cancerous. At a follow-up appointment, however, he learned that the biopsy was negative and that he did not have cancer.