There may be no other single hospital event that causes more debate among the courts than patients falling off of beds and gurneys. Rails up or rails down.

In the ongoing tension between the regulatory oversight of medicine and patient privacy, two new appellate cases tackle the question of when the government’s interest on behalf of the public takes precedent.

Electronic chart narratives containing standard, generalized phraseology will bear poor witness in a subsequent dispute over medical care.

Though an injured worker had not yet pleaded sufficient facts, the Court of Appeal said in a recent ruling the law supports his attempt to try again.

Errors are inevitable, which is why good systems have redundancies. But when the “double-check” gets overlooked, all that effort can come to naught.