Research Studies Category Archives — Page 2 of 52 — DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog Published by Washington, D.C. Personal Injury Lawyers

November 22, 2020

Neglect-and-abuse deaths send nursing homes’ pandemic toll from bad to worse

The coronavirus pandemic’s terrible toll on nursing homes and other long-term care facilities may be much worse than now estimated, as resident advocates, watchdog groups, and experts tally “excess deaths” in the facilities — perhaps one additional casualty beyond any two formally attributed to Covid-19.

These fatalities are unacceptable, resulting from frantic and low-paid health workers’ inability to care for the aged, injured, and chronically ill infected with the coronavirus while also dealing with the needs of people so frail they require institutionalization. It’s tough reading, but here is what the Associated Press reported:

“As more than 90,000 of the nation’s long-term care residents have died in a pandemic that has pushed staffs to the limit, advocates for the elderly say a tandem wave of death separate from the virus has quietly claimed tens of thousands more, often because overburdened workers haven’t been able to give them the care they need. Nursing home watchdogs are being flooded with reports of residents kept in soiled diapers so long their skin peeled off, left with bedsores that cut to the bone, and allowed to wither away in starvation or thirst.

November 10, 2020

D.C. voters join a growing push to reconsider use of hallucinogenic drugs

by Patrick A. Malone

Voters in the nation’s capital joined with peers across the country to nudge forward a further reconsideration of mind-affecting substances popularized in the Sixties but made illicit thereafter.

Support ran strong for a District of Columbia ballot initiative directing local law enforcement to make among its lowest priorities the prosecution of those who use or sell certain hallucinogenic plants and fungi — aka magic mushrooms and psilocybin, the Washington Post reported.

Those substances also appeared to be headed to legalization in an Oregon vote, which also would “decriminalize the possession of all illegal drugs,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

November 6, 2020

Colorectal screening may need to start at age 45, U.S. panel advises

by Patrick A. Malone

An important federal advisory group has joined with medical specialists in recommending a change in the age at which patients should start screening for colorectal cancer, to age 45 and not the current 50 years old.

Earlier detection of bowel issues could save lives, the U.S. Protective Services Task Force (USPSTF) has decided, with the influential medical group issuing a draft screening guidance and posting it online for public and expert comment.

Clinicians have reported for a while now that they are seeing more cases of colorectal cancers in younger patients, and their treatment might have better outcomes if it could be started earlier, too. As the New York Times reported:

November 1, 2020

Optimize November: Vote with care, plan holidays, scrutinize health coverage

by Patrick A. Malone

As coronavirus infections rage unchecked from coast-to-coast, Americans may need to redouble the attention they pay to their health and safeguarding it.

To deal in optimal ways with what threatens to be a tough November, we all may wish to:

Vote as safely as possible.

October 25, 2020

‘Turning a corner’ on pandemic? The hard numbers disagree.

by Patrick A. Malone

Numbers can tell a persuasive story, but will even overpowering figures shock Americans into taking the steps needed to deal with the coronavirus cases surging across the country?

By many metrics, it is counter-factual to contend, as President Trump insists, that the nation is “rounding the corner” on the Covid-19 pandemic and “the country is learning to live with it” — as opposed to getting sick and dying from it. Let’s take a look at a bunch of the metrics:

The United States’ new coronavirus case count exceeded 70,000 in a day for the first time since July.

October 23, 2020

For nursing homes, a quarter lack PPE, half have infected staff, study finds

by Patrick A. Malone

For residents of nursing homes and their loved ones, new and disturbing information has come out on long-term care facilities’ persistent failure to safeguard the vulnerable from the coronavirus that has killed tens of thousands of the institutionalized and infected hundreds of thousands of them and their caregivers.

Six months after the pandemic exploded across the country, more than a quarter of nursing homes nationwide are “reporting shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) and staff, and almost half have staff infected with Covid-19,” according to the AARP, the country’s largest advocacy group for older Americans.

The organization based its finding on its scrutiny of federal data, reporting:

October 18, 2020

Centuries of restraint fall: Top journals assail Trump’s science denialism

by Patrick A. Malone

They are a unique combination — august publications in science and medicine that harken back for centuries yet now inform 21^st century practitioners about the latest advances in their fields. And now these leading scientific journals say the present moment forces them to abandon their prized political neutrality to oppose the science denialism of the incumbent leader of the free world.

This is an unprecedented and uncomfortable development for the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Scientific American, and Lancet Oncology (a journal for cancer specialists). They have never taken a political stand of this kind in their histories, dating to 1812 for NEJM, 1845 for Scientific American, and 1869 for Nature.

Their editors say they would much prefer to stay out of presidential endorsements and to keep their focus on publishing important, rigorous research and peer-reviewed information about advancements in the fields of science and medicine.

October 16, 2020

The health insurance mess: Worker costs jump anew, as kids’ coverage falls

by Patrick A. Malone

The Covid-19 pandemic has forced many Americans to reconsider their transportation options, what with fears of infection and the slashing of public transit systems’ routes and schedules. That has made used cars, motorcycles, and bicycles hot commodities.

Those who are working and considering how their finances might stretch may take little comfort in another reality of the U.S. health care system — the relentlessly increasing cost of employer-provided coverage. Who can afford a second car while also footing the rising bill for health coverage?

As the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation said in its annual report on this issue:

October 14, 2020

Will plutocrats pay $3 billion to keep $13 billion and elude opioid charges?

by Patrick A. Malone

So, who doesn’t daydream a little about money? Maybe even big money. Just imagine a scenario where, if you could put up $3,000, you could keep $13,000, or if you forked over $30,000, and walked away with $130,000? So how great would it be if you paid $3 billion but could stuff $13 billion into your pockets?

What a deal! Of course, it depends on whose perspective you look at it from.

Federal prosecutors and a bankruptcy court may give a plutocratic family that deal, along with a hard-to-imagine get-out-of-jail free card, news organizations report.

October 11, 2020

Infection doesn’t deter President from tub-thumping for yet another unproven drug

by Patrick A. Malone

Well, there he goes again (as President Reagan used to say): President Trump, whose White House has become a coronavirus hot spot and who has clearly played a role in a super spreader event, is hyping yet another medical treatment for Covid-19.

He has referred to his own viral infection as “a blessing from God,” used the C word (as in “cure”) and has called an incipient therapy used on him as a “miracle.” So, now Americans may be racing to reference works to learn more about coronavirus care with monoclonal antibodies, specifically those developed by the Big Pharma firm Regeneron. It is headed by Dr. Leonard Schleifer, and as CNN reported:

“[Schleifer] and President Trump are acquainted: The CEO has been a member at Trump’s golf club in Westchester, New York, and his company also received $450 million in government funding in July as part of the president’s Operation Warp Speed plan to quickly develop a vaccine and other treatments for Covid-19 … Trump also recently owned shares of Regeneron (REGN) [as] listed as assets on Trump’s 2017 filing with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, though [not] on the president’s most recent filing for 2020.”