Our Nation Bleeds

Newsweek-Hospital Horrors

Published on August 4, 2004 By stevendedalus In Current Events

Recent HealthGrades studies show that 195,000 die each year from medical error in hospitals, according to Newsweek. On its website HealthGrades has posted a list of hospitals with the best patient safety records. Also Accreditation of Health Care Organizations has posted a scorecard for the quality of hospitals, and suggest a patient check it out before admissions.

This is outrageous. With this kind of malpractice there would be widespread lawsuits except, I suspect, most cases are covered up. The issue, however, is not lawsuits, but more important is the quality of health care that the political spectrum continues to ignore. Although the Senate recently passed legislation, it only creates voluntary and confidential reporting of medical errors for providers to learn from these mistakes! Here we have color coded alerts for homeland security to save lives and we do nothing about rectifying a serious, continuing casualty list that dwarfs those dying in Iraq. Dr. Samantha Collier, vice president of medical affairs states, [This death toll] “is the equivalent of 390 Jumbo jets filled with people dying each year.”

It is not sad enough that people are at risk because of their illness, but now they have to research a hospital that’s safe? — and in an emergency there is no choice. It is unbelievable that the richest country in the world lets slide appropriate training and health reform. Isn’t it time to stop our nation’s bleeding from widespread mediocrity?

Comments (Page 2)

Larry Kuperman

on Aug 05, 2004

People cry lawsuit for every little mistake.

This article is about wrongful deaths. I worked for over 15 years in the financial area of the healthcare industry. I can tell you from first-hand experience that there is no faster way to get a hospital or medical office to change dangerous or sloppy practices than to sue them.

HMO's and other insurers provide bounties to hospitals nad doctors to reduce costs (to them) by cutting corners. In other words, they pay medical providers to push YOU through the system. Sometimes these incentives result in greater efficiency, sometimes they are dangerous. The only way, as the system stands now, is to tell the providers that if they are too aggressive in cost cutting, that provider can be sued.

For every "little mistake" you will find an equal number of dangerous, life-threatening short-cuts that have been enacted for financial savings. That is why I oppose caps on lawsuits. The insurers will just agree to match the cap by providing reimbursement.

Ithaycu

on Aug 05, 2004

The only pertinent question is whether the doctors involved treated all patients with the same level of care. Doctors, Nurses are just as susceptible to mistakes as any other human being and attributing the mistakes of the health care industry to malicious intent is irresponsible.

Angloesque

on Aug 05, 2004

Larry Kuperman said:

"HMO's and other insurers provide bounties to hospitals nad doctors to reduce costs (to them) by cutting corners."

Curious. What kinds of things are you talking about?

stevendedalus

on Aug 05, 2004

The fact remains 195,000 deaths due to medical errors is unacceptable, not to mention the 24,000 in Canada. That the medical profession has done wonders is no excuse for foul ups when dealing with human lives. That the death toll of 900 in Iraq would have been tripled if medicine hadn't progressed and the methods of triage transportation doesn't soften the blow of the families of those who died. That a teacher with a class of thirty-five does well should not negate the need for smaller classes to do even better. "Help is on the Way!"

Angloesque

on Aug 05, 2004

"Help is on the Way!"

How? You still haven't said how you propose fixing this. I wanna know.

(by the way, why won't Mozilla let me use the quote feature? I had to login to Internet Explorer to do it, though I should know the html code by now...)

Madine

on Aug 05, 2004

Just because the deaths were "preventable" does not mean that they were caused by egregious errors.

The study I linked below, while not as comprehensive as nationwide studies, suggests that:

--most of the "preventable" deaths were people who doctors would not expect to survive more than 3 months with sound mental condition.

--There were deaths could have been prevented by more medical care consistent with percentrages in earlier studies, but "We found no instances of egregious mishaps, like inadvertent administration of the wrong medication,''

``While deaths due to medical errors are still extremely important even when patients have very short life expectancies, the correct understanding of these errors may differ substantially from how they have been publicly portrayed to date,'' Hayward and Hofer conclude.

``Our study suggests that the previously reported statistics have been misunderstood,'' Hayward told Reuters Health. ``Both the likelihood that a true error had occurred and the likelihood that an error caused the death have probably been dramatically over-estimated.''

It is important for the public to know, according to Hayward, that most of the ``errors'' reported in studies that review patients' medical charts ``represent difficult medical decisions in very ill people.... In such instances, some physicians will feel that an error occurred and others will not.''

Cancerpage.com

vincible

on Aug 05, 2004

If I recall correctly the US spends more on health care than any other country but is ranked only 16th in quality of the health care system.

The US spends about 15% of GDP on heath care. Other industrialized nations spend roughly half that. Health care in the US is superb if you're rich, and subpar for industrialized nations if you're poor. (I'm not going to look up citations right now, but I'm quite sure about these.)

Although I'm instinctively skeptical of government spending, facts like those make me open to the idea of having a government-run system. There are some rare areas where free markets really don't work best, and health care may very well be one of them.

Angloesque

on Aug 05, 2004

Larry, I got a logical question for you: You say that insurance companies "provide bounties to hospitals and [sic] doctors to reduce costs (to them) by cutting corners" and that this can be efficient but dangerous. I'm not trying to misquote you--this should be accurate.

If this were true, and I don't see any evidence yet, then insurance companies would be doing themselves a disservice to promote cutting corners if, in effect, there are dangerous outcomes which would result in lawsuits, ergo losing the insurance companies $$$.

Now this is not factual--it's just me thinking about it. Post some examples of these insurance company-induced cut corners. Maybe I'm taking the wrong track.

stevendedalus

on Aug 05, 2004

There are some rare areas where free markets really don't work best, and health care may very well be one of them.

I'm with you on this.

Madine, I grant you that the truth is perhaps somewhere in the middle; nevertheless, we have a serious problem, particularly with life-expectancy continually on the rise. We can't very well write off the elderly.

kingbee

on Aug 06, 2004

If this were true, and I don't see any evidence yet, then insurance companies would be doing themselves a disservice to promote cutting corners if, in effect, there are dangerous outcomes which would result in lawsuits, ergo losing the insurance companies $$$.

im sure larry will be able to provide specific examples, but it generally goes like this: the best way of treating condition a costs $x. another procedure that is effective only 90% of the time costs $.80x. if you need to perform the procedure 1000 times annually, there is an obvious economic advantage to doing it the cheaper way. unless it places you in jeopardy of zillion dollar awards. if you know it wont, why spend money doing it the better way? other than ethics of course.

I'm with you on this.

it makes at least as much sense as 'socialized' interstate highway building.

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums.
Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
It's simple, and FREE!