At Hospitals, Patient Alarms Often Ignored

The death of a 60-year-old patient at UMass Memorial Medical Center raised the alarm on a problem plaguing hospitals nationwide: the many medical machines that beep for attention. The man, whose name has not been released, died in August 2010 after alarms signaling possible heart and breathing problems went unanswered for nearly an hour, the Boston Globe reported. His death is the second blamed on so-called alarm fatigue at the Worcester, Mass., hospital in four years. "Simply adding alarms...Full Story