Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital

Friday the thirteenth may be a good day to talk about mistakes. The title of the 1999 IOM report on medical errors reminds me of a joke--"to err is human, but to really foul things up takes a computer." This month we have news of two national-scale IT implementations with significant problems. The first is the Medicare Part D system where needed coverage and benefit information …

Navigant, the hospital management specialist which took over the management of day-to-day operations at troubled Martin Luther King/Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles, has admitted it failed to inform regulators of two serious incidents at the hospital. The Los Angeles Times reports that officials at the consulting company have admitted that they learned of the incidents -- one of which involved the death of a patient after nurses failed to respond to a bed side alarm -- but did …

The Los Angeles Times reports that local officials are seriously weighing outsourcing all operations at Martin Luther King/Drew Medical Center after the latest round of problems at the troubled institution. Navigant Consulting, a firm brought in to right problems at the facility, has made little progress and has itself been accused of malfeasance. Authorities are considering closing the hospital temporarily or possibly ordering it shut down for good. That, of course, would …