A few weeks ago, a surgeon at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center operated on the wrong side of a patient. This is a grievous error, one of the so-called “never events” that’s just not supposed to happen anymore. It still does happen though, so what was perhaps most striking about this incident was the openness with which the hospital administration handled the whole thing. As the Boston Globe reported, the hospital’s top brass sent an email to the entire staff disclosing the event, which occurred in an elective procedure from which the patient recovered without incident. And Paul Levy, the hospital’s CEO, has given the subject a thorough airing on his personal blog, Running a Hospital. Yesterday, in his latest post on the subject, Levy took on a tricky question. Should the surgeon be punished for the error? There was...
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