Health care consumer news item of the day: Seton Medical Center in Daly City has been slapped with a $100,000 fine—that’s the maximum the state dishes out—after an alleged nurse’s error cost a woman her life. Here are the salient graphs from a Mercury News piece:
A nurse was changing a breathing tube on an 81-year-old woman's trachea this year and failed to remove a cap on the new tube. The cap prevented the woman from breathing and she died, according to an investigation released by California Department of Public Health.
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Hospital staff didn't notice the cap was still in place until a nurse realized the woman, who was not identified, was not breathing.
