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Pretty scary findings by the Dept of Health and Human Services Inspector General:
In a groundbreaking study, the U.S. Health and Human Services' Office of the Inspector General randomly sampled 780 Medicare beneficiaries' billings from October 2008. It concluded that adverse medical care is contributing to around 15,000 deaths per month nationwide and costing taxpayers about $4.4 billion a year...The most common incidents involved medication errors - the wrong drug or dose.
This is not a "groundbreaking study." Previous studies have come up with similar estimates of the number of deaths caused by hospital treatment errors. We have extremely expensive healthcare with advanced technology but lots are errors are still made. With the high number of errors it is clear that there is no simple source or remedial action which will improve this. All of the regulatory and certifying agencies have been working for improvements. It is not surprising that the best solution is to get patients out of the hospital as soon as possible. The federal govt is also working towards a "pay for performance" model. High quality, efficient hospitals will receive higher reimbursements than hospitals providing a lower quality of care. Of course, there will be all sorts of problems with this. How do you measure the quality? There may also be a problem with access to hospital care. If smaller community hospitals cannot cope with all of the regulations and monitors, they will not be paid well and many will be forced to close. Think twice about retiring to a remote rural area where there may be limited access to healthcare.
Pretty scary findings by the Dept of Health and Human Services Inspector General:
In a groundbreaking study, the U.S. Health and Human Services' Office of the Inspector General randomly sampled 780 Medicare beneficiaries' billings from October 2008. It concluded that adverse medical care is contributing to around 15,000 deaths per month nationwide and costing taxpayers about $4.4 billion a year...The most common incidents involved medication errors - the wrong drug or dose.
"About 44 percent of these incidents were deemed preventable. But in more than half the cases the patients' conditions were so complex, or the patients so frail, that their problems may have been unavoidable."
So, it appears more likely that it is 6,600 deaths were due to mismedication or other carelessness.
We pay more for healthcare per capita in this country than any country in the world and look at how many shortcomings we have. I just don't buy the idea anymore that we have the best healthcare in the world and that reform is going to ruin it. Its not as good as some claim it is period.
To be fair, many of the errors claimed in the report were true accidents as opposed to outright negligence. For example, some patients are allergic to penicillin, but there is no history on record of their being so. So, when they get a penicillin shot...BOOM...they find out in a big way that they have an allergy. Another issue is the use of blood thinning medication. Drugs like Heparin and Coumadin are in wide useage because of bonafide fears of blood clotting, strokes, and heart attacks. Yet, if too much of these medications are used people can die of internal bleeding or suffer other complications.
Yet, it doesn't change the fact though that huge numbers of people are dying because of carelessness and neglect in hospitals. And, at the same, I bet you will the newly elected Republican House of Representatives in Congress scream that we need "tort reform" to lower medical costs. How smart is it to make it harder to prove malpractice with this much negligence--causing this much harm--going on in hospitals?
Enacting these "reforms" would be just plain dumb.
I agree, taking patients on and off these blood thinning drugs can be extremely dangerous. I know one person who had a stroke after being taken off in order to have some surgery, then was put back on and had the stroke.
Another friend of mine had a stroke after having surgery and the doctor just about admitted it was their fault.
And all the staph infections...
Hospitals can be very dangerous places for the elderly.
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