NEVADA - LAS VEGAS HOSPITAL REPORTS NEEDED!

Submitted by: Myke 

HOSPITAL REPORTS NEEDED

Dear Conservative,

There’s a running joke about hospitals here: Where do you go for great health care in Las Vegas?

“The airport.”

That was how the Las Vegas Sun began its investigative series last year on the secret world of hospital-acquired infections and medical errors, and how Nevada residents have no access to public information about how good – or bad – a job their local hospitals do at keeping patients safe.

But that could change with your help. Legislation to make Nevada hospitals document and publicly report medical harm, including hospital infections, has passed the state Senate and is in the Assembly. We need your help to push these bills through and to the Governor’s desk before lawmakers break for the year!

Tell your Assembly member to pass these bills, and help make your next stay in a Nevada hospital safer!

The newspaper investigation found that over a two-year period, patients in Las Vegas hospitals suffered 969 life-threatening infections or preventable injuries during their stays. Among the incidents: a woman’s healthy kidney was removed because the surgeon thought it was a cancerous mass; and a debilitating bed-sore the size of a salad plate developed on a man recovering from heart surgery.

Of course, patients in Nevada didn’t know about these and other incidents at the time, because these reports aren’t made public. And hospitals have little incentive to take the steps needed to prevent these errors because patients have no way to check on their safety track record.

That can change with three bills now in the Nevada Assembly health committee. Your member is on this committee, urge him or her to move these bills now.

You should know how safe your local hospital is – tell your Assembly member you want that information!

Thank you for taking action. And if you have friends and family who live nearby in your state legislative district, please forward this email to them so they can act, too.

Sincerely,
Suzanne Henry
Safe Patient Project.org
A project of Consumers Union
506 W. 14th St., Suite A
Austin, TX 78701