Health

A judge in Grand Rapids says the state of Michigan must comply with a federal request to turn over information about the medical marijuana records of six people in the Lansing area. The Department of Community Health had refused to comply with a subpoena from federal agents without a court order. That's because Michigan's medical marijuana law has a confidentiality provision.
    

New University of Michigan research finds a link between bullying and sleepiness.  U of M researchers looked at students in Ypsilanti public schools and found students who got in trouble for bullying were twice as likely to be sleepy during the school day or suffer from sleep apnea. 

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius toured facilities at Detroit’s Henry Ford Hospital Friday.

Sebelius was there to promote the department’s Partnership for Patients initiative. More than 1500 hospitals have signed on so far.

That program aims to save more than 60,000 lives over three years, by cutting preventable injuries and complications that result from hospital visits.

Sebelius says about one in three Americans leave hospitals in worse shape than when they arrived.

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Katherine Sebelius toured the Henry Ford Hospital today as part of the government's initiative to reduce patient care mistakes.

According to the Detroit News, Sebelius said:

"We spend way too many dollars on care that was not needed in the first place because we're trying to fix mistakes that shouldn't have happened in the first place," she said during a roundtable discussion.

I remember going into the hospital to have an operation on my left knee awhile back. Nurses put a sleeve over my right leg, and it seemed like a dozen different doctors and nurses asked me which leg was being operated on.

"Don't they know?" I thought.

Then I realized they were going through a system of checks and balances to make sure doctors cut open the correct leg.

If they cut open the wrong leg, it would have been bad, but at least I would have survived.

A 1999 Institute of Medicine study estimated that as many as 98,000 Americans die every year from preventable medical errors, and the government says that number didn't improve much in the following decade.