Luxury digs for cheap Travel discounters have gone upscale with Web sites that offer lower rates at luxury hotels and resorts. LuxRes.com ( http://www.luxres.com) offers last-minute rates of up to 40 percent off for four- and five-star hotels, as well as for luxury cruises and the Orient-Express.
If you're up for more of a gamble, Luxury Link ( http://www.luxurylink.com) lets you bid on a limited number of deeply discounted packages. Recent auctions included accommodations at the Chan Chich
Lodge in Belize, Rabbit Hill Inn in Vermont, and the Hotel Majestic Roma in Italy. Telling patients “I’m sorry” When physicians make a mistake, they often stop communicating with the patient involved. Now a new coalition of doctors, lawyers,
insurers, and patient representatives is encouraging doctors and their insurers to fess up when mistakes happen, offer apologies,
and provide fair compensation up front to patients and their attorneys. The Illinois-based Sorry Works! Coalition ( http://www.sorryworks.net) contends that a full-disclosure approach to medical mistakes can assuage patients' anger and lead to fewer lawsuits, lower
settlement and litigation costs, and better control over liability exposure. Apologies also help to maintain relationships
with patients and families. The program is based on one developed and implemented at the Lexington (KY) Veterans Affairs Medical Center in the late 1980s.
That program's success at reducing lawsuits and settlement costs was reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 1999. The hospital's former chief of staff, Steve Kraman, codeveloped the program and is now a Sorry Works! board member.
Doctors to get back insurers' overcharges Washington State's largest medical malpractice insurer overcharged doctors who bought coverage in 2003. Consequently, the
state insurance commissioner has ordered Physicians Insurance and its affiliate, Western Professional Insurance, to refund
more than $1.3 million, plus interest. The refund that individual physicians receive (no timetable has been set) will depend
on the amount of coverage they purchased and other factors that the companies used in pricing their policies. The companies
have also been fined $90,000 for insurance code violations.
This lawyer has 6,000 reasons to avoid frivolous suits
This lawyer has 6,000 reasons to avoid frivolous suits An Ohio judge has formally sanctioned an attorney who brought a frivolous suit against a physician. The plaintiff's attorney
pressed her case even after her own expert witness could offer no evidence that the doctor hadn't met the prevailing standard
of care. The judge ordered her to pay the physician $6,000 plus interest, to cover the expenses he incurred defending himself.
Moreover, the judge specified that the plaintiffs themselves wouldn't be liable for any part of that award. The attorney is
appealing. Physicians far more popular than managed care. Although the public is generally positive about the value of prescription drugs to society, they have a much more positive
view of the physicians who prescribe them than of the companies that produce them, according to a recent survey. While almost
four out of five respondents believe that prescription drugs have had a positive impact on the lives of Americans, only 14
percent say they have a "very favorable" view of pharmaceutical companies; three times as many say the same about doctors.
The first week of the month can be hazardous Patients are 25 percent more likely to die from prescription drug errors in the first week of the month than they are in the
last week of the previous month, says a California researcher who crunched data from 47 million computerized death certificates.
The possible cause: overworked pharmacists. Pharmacists are usually busy at the beginning of the month due to a corresponding spike in government payments to individuals,
which results in more people buying more prescriptions. However, there's not enough data on death certificates to place the
blame squarely on pharmacists, say University of California, San Diego sociology professor David Phillips and other authors
of the study. The records, for instance, don't establish how or where the prescription drug error occurred. The study appears in the January issue of Pharmacotherapy. 
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