The Colorado 2012 ballot may include a proposal for legalizing marijuana, but local activist Douglas Bruce has brought a legal challenge against the proposal. Bruce, of Colorado Springs, argues the proposal to make pot legal for adults over 21 doesn't properly say that it would raise taxes.
Police statewide are encountering more drivers who are either under the influence of marijuana or are carrying the drug illegally with them in their vehicle, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation and local police. Drug evaluations of impaired drivers that turned up positive for marijuana increased 35 percent from 2009 to 2010, according to state numbers.
Fifteen hundred people a day make the hike up to the top of Vernal Fall, in Yosemite National Park. Yesterday, about a dozen people had entered the river above Vernal Fall, posing for pictures. Three companions were posing on rocks when one after the other, all three slipped into the river and ultimately over the waterfall.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week has released a safety check list for medical facilities who are treating people on an outpatient basis. The safety checklist guidelines are aimed to reduce outpatient infections in response to findings that multiple facilities aren't adhering to standard infection prevention practices.
SafetyBook⢠is a home inventory tracker and product recall monitor which sends alerts to participants when products which they have listed are recalled. Consumers can privately products and SafetyBook will a Direct-Alert⢠notification when a listed item is recalled.
Late last month the Colorado Supreme Court voted to implement the Proposed Civil Access Pilot Project, which was the subject of a lengthy public hearing in January. The program will go into effect on January 1, 2012. The pilot stage of the project will last two years and will be implemented in much of the Denver metro area.
A new study by the American Medical Association suggests that outpatient clinics need to be scrutinized as closely as hospitals for the level of medical mistakes which are occurring. In recent years, the focus of patient safety efforts has been on hospitals rather than in outpatient settings such as doctors' offices and urgent care centers. Hospitals have come under scrutiny for medication errors, hospital-acquired infections and wrong-site surgeries. But the recent AMA study found that serious errors that result in malpractice awards also occur frequently in outpatient settings, suggesting that more attention needs to be paid to the care provided outside the hospital.
Seven years ago rules were adopted by the Joint Commission, the Chicago-based group that accredits the nation's hospitals, to prevent operations on the wrong patient or body part. These rules require preoperative verification of important details, marking of the surgical site and a timeout to confirm everything just before the procedure starts.
