- Pulse Points
- Posts
- 🚔 KY law decriminalizes medical errors
🚔 KY law decriminalizes medical errors
Staff shortages, AI in Radiology, States and private equity, Ascension lawsuits, Vaping rates in teens, and more!
Pulse Points
May 20, 2024
In this edition:
🚔 KY law decriminalizes medical errors
🤏 Dealing with staff shortages
🩻 AI in Radiology
🤝 States push back against private equity in healthcare
⚖️ Ascension hit with lawsuits
And more!
Kentucky law decriminalizes medical errors
The fear of legal and criminal repercussions can hinder a nurse’s ability to make quick decisions in critical situations, building stress and anxiety.
In Kentucky, healthcare workers now have a shield against medical errors thanks to a new law signed this spring.
House Bill 159 (HB 159), signed into law by Governor Andy Beshear on March 26, 2024
It grants criminal immunity to healthcare providers, including nurses, doctors, and other medical staff, for unintentional errors made while providing patient care. The law makes Kentucky the first state in the U.S. to enact such legislation.
Dealing with staff shortages
Employee turnover, which includes physicians, nurses and allied health care professionals, is one of the costliest challenges in health care and threatens to worsen as the demand for care exceeds the supply of workers.
About 1 in 5 health care workers have left medicine since the pandemic began.
Since the pandemic started, 18% have quit, 12% have been laid off, and 31% have considered leaving.
In 2022, nearly 1.7 million people quit their health care jobs – equivalent to almost 3% of the health care workforce.
It is estimated that the cost to replace a health care employee averages the amount of a year's salary for that position.
Specialty Spotlight
Radiology
AI has ability to improve Radiologists accuracy
Radiologists have used computers to enhance images and flag suspicious areas since the 1990s. But the latest AI programs can go much further, interpreting the scans, offering a diagnosis and even drafting written reports about their findings.
The algorithms are often trained on millions of X-rays and other images collected from hospitals and clinics.
Across medicine, the FDA has OK’d more than 700 AI algorithms to aid physicians. More than 75% of them are in radiology, yet just 2% of radiology practices use such technology, according to one recent estimate.