Babies born through planned home deliveries should receive the same level of newborn care as those born in hospitals or freestanding birthing centers, according to American Academy of Pediatrics policy published in May.

The academy’s statement, formulated by its Committee on Fetus and Newborn, is meant to supplement the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ policy adopted in February 2011 and reaffirmed in 2013. The ob-gyns and pediatricians agree that hospitals and birthing centers are the safest settings for birth. Although the ACOG statement acknowledges that women have the right to make a medically informed choice about delivery, the AAP strikes a somewhat softer tone, saying its policy is “intended to help pediatricians provide supportive, informed counsel to women considering home birth.”

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Errors in diagnosis are responsible for more deaths, disabilities and medical liability payments than any other kind of medical error, according to a review of more than 350,000 paid claims from 1986 to 2010 included in the National Practitioner Data Bank.

The findings echo earlier research and draw on the largest set of cases yet to be analyzed. More than 100,000 medical liability cases involved errors in diagnosis, nearly 30% of the total. That compares with 27% for treatment mistakes and 24% for surgical errors, said the study, published online April 22 in BMJ Quality & Safety.

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The World Medical Assn. is telling physicians to think twice about working in the United Arab Emirates after the criminal case of a South African physician raised serious concerns about the fairness with which the country addresses medical-legal matters.

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The American Medical Association announced in April that the first phase of its multiyear, multimillion-dollar initiative to improve health outcomes will focus on the prevention of two common, costly and often deadly conditions through better care for patients with uncontrolled hypertension and prediabetes.

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Most U.S. medical schools are earning high marks on an influential scorecard that grades their conflict-of-interest policies. In the latest edition of its PharmFree Scorecard, released April 9, the American Medical Student Assn. handed out A’s and B’s to 114, or 72%, of the nation’s 158 allopathic and osteopathic medical schools.

That represents a rise from last year’s results, which saw 102 schools, or 65%, get an A or a B. The scorecard grades schools’ policies on how tightly they restrict interactions with pharmaceutical companies, device makers and other medical industry firms in 11 areas such as gifts, meals, drug samples and faculty participation in speakers’ bureaus.

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The physicians who run the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance do their best to treat patients who have cancer. For patients whose disease progression cannot be controlled, the University of Washington-affiliated comprehensive care center offers palliative care and transition to hospice.

And for those who seek physician-assisted suicide under state law, the center is prepared to help them with that, too.

Providing access to doctor-hastened death is an element of top-notch care for terminally ill patients, SCCA’s clinical leaders argue in a first-of-its-kind published report to outline an organization’s physician-assisted suicide protocols and the results for its patients. The authors wrote in the April 11 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine that their program should be “particularly instructive” to other comprehensive cancer centers in states where doctor-assisted suicide is legal or may be legal one day.

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I’ve run a little behind on blogging a few recent stories of mine in American Medical News.

I covered the top 10 ways to improve patient safety (now!), how cardiac care units are learning from Toyota, what hospitals are doing to improve conversations about end-of-life care, and how emergency physicians are ensuring safer “handoffs” of patients from one doctor to another.

Now we’re all caught up. Swell.

Working together to share best practices, analyze data and implement care improvements, 333 hospitals participating in a quality collaborative have cut their risk-adjusted mortality rate by 36% since 2007, said a report issued in March by the project’s organizers.

The Quality, Efficiency, Safety, Transparency initiative — dubbed QUEST for short — was launched in 2007 with 157 hospitals by Premier Inc., a Charlotte, N.C.-based purchasing and quality improvement alliance of more than 2,800 U.S. hospitals.

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After a slight dip in the 2012 Match, the share of fourth-year U.S. medical students opting for residencies in primary care specialties rose again in 2013. But physician organizations and medical schools warned that rising student interest in primary care is not enough to avert projected physician shortages and does not make up for the lack of graduate medical education slots available due to a cap on federal funding of such residency positions.

The number of U.S. seniors entering primary care residencies fell by less than 1% in 2012 but saw an increase of 5.5% in 2013. A total of 6,327 seniors opted for GME positions in family medicine, internal medicine and pediatrics. Nearly 700 more residency positions of all kinds were offered this year, yet the share of U.S. students choosing primary care still rose by 1.3% to 38.6% in 2013.

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With the start of federally required tracking of industry payments to physicians to begin in August, some of the biggest names in medicine are staking a claim that shining a light on the financial ties between health industry companies and physicians should not discourage relationships that yield beneficial innovations in patient care.

In a statement of principles released March 11, a wide range of trade groups for pharmaceutical companies, device manufacturers, clinical research organizations and medical schools joined with physician organizations representing osteopathic doctors, neurosurgeons and other medical specialties to defend the value of research projects and other relationships among doctors and health industry companies.

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About once a year, a patient or family member will “jump up and just walk out of the room when I mention hospice,” says David Casarett, MD, chief medical officer of the University of Pennsylvania Health System’s hospice program.

“They will say: ‘We came to Penn for the best possible treatment. You were supposed to save Dad’s life, and now you’re giving up on him. How dare you do that to my father!’ ”

Even though such harsh reactions may be the exception, Dr. Casarett says, they are enough to make many doctors uneasy about bringing up hospice — a program that offers at-home nursing care, pain and symptom relief, spiritual counseling and other services but typically requires patients to forgo disease-directed treatments that aim to extend survival time.

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The experience of working in American health care is being drained of joy and meaning amid a rising rate of occupational injuries, episodes of verbal abuse and physical assaults from colleagues, and a seemingly relentless drive to provide more care in less time.

This toxic blend is setting back the effort to improve the quality of care and prevent patient harm, according to a recently published report produced by some of the most distinguished names in the field of patient safety.

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Graduating medical students rate their level of education debt as the least influential factor in their choice of specialty, according to an Assn. of American Medical Colleges survey of nearly of 14,000 students. But others said money is a driver among many of the reasons students named for picking their career path.

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