Hospitals in California are under close watch for medical mishaps taking place more frequently
In the state of California, 12 hospitals have been fined over medical errors that have seriously injured people or even killed them.
Of those 12 hospitals that were fined, 8 of them were in Southern California.
Some of the mistakes that were made were with pharmaceutical drugs and others were leaving instruments inside patients.
At USC University Hospital, there was a $50,000 fine for giving the wrong medication to a female. They gave her 5 overdoses that caused kidney failure and seizures that had to be treated with dialysis.
A women fell out of an intensive care bed and was disconnected from her IV and oxygen and later died at Palomar Medical Center in Escondido.
At Placentia-Linda Hospital surgeons replace a patients left knee with a part designed for the right knee.
The list goes on with mistakes that are made. In the wake of all these mistakes, California Pacific Medical Center is requiring that all tools and objects brought in to an operating room be counted twice. They are doing this by using a “count” bag instead of a garbage bag making it easier to systematically count items again.
Other measures are being implemented in all the hospitals. Things such as additional training for surgical staff and safety audits, or retraining nurses to read prescription orders and doing random auditing on medication orders.
