Entire Medical Centre Stuffs Up - Labtests Get All The Credit
So health providers are all to blame but Labtests is sensationally named again in the first paragraph. The medical clinic only makes it in the last paragraph as do St John. So lets look at it:
The report says Mrs Pineki had limited understanding of her diabetes
The Medical Centre didn't educate its patient properly.
Labtests said yesterday the report's authors had advised it that the laboratory matters in the report did not directly lead to Mrs Pineki's death..
She told her GP clinic's nurse by phone on September 7 she was suffering hypoglycaemic episodes. This was not reported to her GP. The nurse ordered a home-visit blood test.
Failure to report from the nurse to the Doctor of a medical condition the patient was suffering.
A Labtests employee took the samples on September 8.
Did their job.
The medical clinic had not reported hypoglycaemia or any medical details on the order form, so the tests were processed as "routine".
So the Medical Clinic stuffed up the paperwork and Labtest followed the paperwork.
Rubbish in and rubbish out. At least one Doctor and Nurse not named here made mistakes. Yet Labtests again carries the can for a death of a 68 year old woman who could not manage her diabetes properly.
Charming reporting.
Update: MacDoctor does it with more balance
posted by Cactus Kate at 1:06 AM
7 Comments:
Thanks for pointing out that morsel of selective reporting and here's some more from the same article:
"The lab report was faxed to the clinic the next morning.
The results were critically abnormal, but a delay in processing meant it was unclear if this was real, or caused by natural breakdown in the blood sample. Another tube of blood containing an added chemical to restrict the breakdown of glucose in blood was not tested.
The report says Labtests should have urgently made direct contact with the test requester."
Well, yes, but not reporting urgent results is SOP for LTA isn't it?
So there you go, Prickles- you seem to have missed a bit. Selectively.
Maybe direct contact with the GP would have been made, had DML provided its contact database to Labtests, and handed the laboratory service over in an ethical way. I guess pique takes precedence over professionalism, at least in the Sonic Healthcare view of the world.
Oh wait, the database was "DML's intellectual property".
What a load of rubbish about DML not providing it's database so no direct contact could be made with the patient's GP.
Heard of the whitepages on line Labtests?? Takes all of 5 secs to get the medical centre's phone number.If it is after hours the answering service will give you the GP's home contact number.
I have had to do this myself on several occasions, so don't go blaming DML for LT's failures!
I didn't notice the Auckland medical establishment baying for the blood of either the GP or St John today when their errors were publicised in this report - no one crying out for the Stoddard Road Medical Centre to have it's capitation funding stripped from it - no one calling that GP incompetent........an eerie silence descended as the myth that all Auckland medical providers (except Labtests) are utterly perfect was well and truly shattered. Disgraceful that this poor woman's death was dragged through the media for no other reason that to attempt to discredit Labtests.
Anon 1, if you read the report in the Herald you will see that the sample was routine, not urgent.
Who says there was a delay in processing - it has been reported that the result was reported well within the agreed turn around.
It was up to the Dr to order another test if he felt the result was wrong and get hold of the patient yet he did not.
All medical professionals now have a scapecoat for all their mistakes.
Did anyone notice that from the report it was 31 hours after Labtests had reported the result back to the GP that this woman was taken to hospital. A whole day and a half that the GP had the result, the ambulance came and took the patients blood glucose levels 3 more times and went away again, the patient took her own blood glucose levels 13 more times - a total of 16 more tests as her levels went up and down like a yo-yo, making the Labtests result entirely irrelevant by the time this woman went to hospital - so how Labtests gets highlighted in the media is beyond me. What was the GP doing all that time?
Anon 8.28am - I selectively told Labtests side of the story, only fair when Martin Johnston ONCE AGAIN gets an F for failure to balance in reporting about medical issues.
Once again MacDoctor has a balanced view relating to his actual experience, shock horror as a Doctor.
http://www.macdoctor.co.nz/2009/11/17/wrong-answers/
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