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Aug 10, 2009 06:45 PM | 29
Preventable medical mistakes and infections are responsible for about 200,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, according to an investigation by the Hearst media corporation. The report comes 10 years after the Institute of Medicine's "To Err Is Human" analysis, which found that 44,000 to 98,000 people were dying annually due to these errors and called for the medical community and government to cut that number in half by 2004.
The precise number of these deaths is still unknown because many states lack a standard or mandatory reporting system for injuries due to medical mistakes. The investigative team gathered disparate medical records, legal documents, personnel files and reports and analyzed databases to arrive at its estimate.
Many, including President Barack Obama, have advocated for a broader adoption of electronic medical records as both a life- and cost-saver. But not everyone is convinced that current technology will help doctors and nurses who already have set ways of handling patient information. "The systems as they stand now are still fairly clunky and user unfriendly," Robert Wachter, a professor of hospital medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told Hearst. "In the last several years, we've seen a literature emerge of medical errors caused by computer systems."
Some think that despite the grim numbers, patient safety has improved overall since the 1999 report. "Now, you have checklists prior to surgery; you mark the spot on which limb you were going to operate on," Mary Stefl, dean of health care administration at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, told Hearst. "And afterwards, they count the surgical sponges and instruments so they presumably don’t leave anything inside. But it still happens."
In fact, according to Phil Bronstein, who led the investigation, "The annual medical error death toll is higher than that for fatal car crashes," he said in a prepared statement.
Image of scissors left inside of a patient after surgery courtesy of iStockphoto/LukaszPanek
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29 Comments
Add CommentI'm not defending the industry, as healthcare can still do a lot more to reduce errors. But to say "more than doubled" is inaccurate. The Hearst study is basically citing the same numbers as earlier research: 98,000 deaths from preventable medical error and 99,000 deaths from hospital acquired infections. About 200,000, the number in the Hearst report, which starts:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Experts estimate that a staggering 98,000 people die from preventable medical errors each year. More Americans die each month of preventable medical injuries than died in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001."
Your headline should read "Deaths from avoidable medical error do not fall in past decade, investigation shows"
That's a damn shame. But it's not double. It should be better, but it's not double.
Also, to the professor's comment that some "think" safety is better, that's exactly right... they think it is, except when it is not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are too many reports in the news of cases where errors occur and it turns out the surgeons and O.R. teams are NOT following these proven safety methods, such as using time outs and doing counts.
I wrote more about this here:
http://www.leanblog.org/2009/08/dead-by-mistake-report-hits-news.html
The actual number is over 2-million per year are murdered by medical doctors in USA, half be medmal and half by aborticide. But since when have "news" corporations told the truth?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The most stunning statistic, however, is that the total number of deaths caused by conventional medicine is an astounding 783,936 per year. It is now evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the US. Using Leape's 1997 medical and drug error rate would add another 216,000 deaths, for a total of 999,936 deaths annually. Our estimated 10-year total of 7.8 million iatrogenic* deaths is more than all the casualties from all the wars fought by the US throughout its entire history. Our considerably higher figure is equivalent to six jumbo jets are falling out of the sky each day."
Gary Null, PhD; Carolyn Dean MD, ND; Martin Feldman, MD; Debora Rasio, MD; Dorothy Smith, PhD, "Death by Medicine", March 2004 (plus 1-Million annual aborticides in USA)
www.lef.org/magazine/mag2004/mar2004_awsi_death_01.htm
American culture is increasingly Machiavellian, Orwellian, and authoritarian. The same is reflected in our health care system such that the quality of health care has deteriorated as a result of the same. As was the case in Shakespeare's play, "Julius Caesar",: " The fault, Dear Brutus, is not in the stars but in ourselves that we are underlings."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe oddity of our penchant for over protecting professionals in the US is truly amazing. It takes on religious aspects.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMost sadly these are the very people who should be safeguarding the group rather than being shielded from consequences.
So what's an "unavoidable" medical error? How does that differ from an "avoidable" one?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI practiced medicine for 17 years in rural Arizona, I doubt 1 out of every 300 people in my town of 3000 died based on a figure of a million dying each year, but I can believe the 200,000 figure. Most of our residents did not have access to the latest and greatest procedures as many were uninsured. As Shannon Brownlee discusses in her book "Overtreated", access to health insurance and medical procedures (based on real studies) was an important reason people ended up dead from medicine. I did family practice and realized with in 5 years of starting medicine that it did not work as advertised (i.e. medical school) and it was dangerous. I felt the Hippocratic oath meant something and am most proud of the fact that I don't think I killed anyone. Most doc's don't have a clue that motrin kills people by causing heart attacks (lots of people) (http://www.ahrq.gov/news/press/pr2006/nsaidpr.htm).Regardless of what Peter Jennings and the idiots on the Today show (yes that includes Snyederman) very little of what doc's do saves lives. If I can get a patient to quit smoking, I have extended his life span, didn't save a damn thing though. Remove a polyp, extended someone's life, didn't save it. Trauma surgeons save lives in the narrowest sense. The stuff that dissolves clots in a heart attack saves lots of lives, but kills a bunch to from bleeding strokes (does that risk benefit count in the number of people killed?). The fact is that more people are now killed from the wide spread use of antibiotics and hospital acquired infections now resistant to most antibiotics due to overuse, and yet many who read this feel justified in going to their doc and demanding a zpak for their sore throat and it isn't going to help. Really I love to blast most doc's as they as a group are arrogant and uncaring, the arrogance comes from training, but the uncaring comes from years of having become commodities for patients and insurance companies. Widespread access to insurance is the last thing we need if we don't like what is happening to our medical care (and it far from good for what it costs). The carnage and cost will only go up if everyone is insured, Obama will kill more people than Stalin int he next 20 years if this insurance plan goes through. And lastly, if you think you know enough to have an answer to this, you don't know a thing. How the govt is going to fix a problem of which they have no real understanding is a mystery to me, if it were that easy, it wouldn't be a problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTen years ago the Journal of American Medical Association reported that medical treatment is the third major cause of death. Along with upwards spiralling costs it approaching a leading position as a cause of death.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlready 40 years ago professor HR Holman at Stanford U wrote an article "The 'Excellence' Deception in Modern Medicine" showing that the costs of modern medicine had increased greatly without a corresponding improvement of results ( Hosp Pract. 11; 18-21. 1976.).
The same goes for the present situation with the difference that medicine is becoming deadlier and deadlier the more expensive it is.
It is evident that the health care reform of today must go along with a total reformation of the health care system to be really useful. Modern medicine has failed to produce effective cures in major areas of disease, to a great extent because the profit interest of the drug corporations has been leading the development of therapies. Their obvious interest is not curing diseases. This is why their "remedies" to a great extent just kill symptoms without curing the cause.
This is a fundamentally rotten system that must be replaced.
Actually the figure could be much higher. Most of the cases go unreported. The article talks about the cases which were repoted or detected. I am sure the actual figure would shock everyone.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd the creationists said that death is caused by dying!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDear Madam. Sir,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet not words like "error, negligence or mistake" blind us from some bitter facts. I live in Switzerland, I have not only read about Nazi doctors and surgeons performing fatal and dangerous medical experiments of torturing and painful types on Jews as well as on liberal Europeans; i have also read in Swiss daily papers about doctors a,d paramedics killing and injuring their patients in a way that could only be described as intenrional damage-many a times rather serious and permanently disabling and fatal-on their patients who trusted such doctors; and allow me to speak of my own experience where an eye surgeon half succeeded in making me blind with laser surgery; she claimed it was an error but circumstances proved that it was intentional and not just negligence etc.
Let us keep our eyes open, even when half damaged by the Neo-nazi surgeons, doctors and paramedic, to the bitter realities of life ???
Thanks
M Younes SHEIKH
couldnt agree with you more.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisexactly, couldnt agree with you more.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOur country spends twice as much per capita on healthcare compared to Europe or Japan. Unfortunately, we do not get what we pay for, as the US is dead last in every international study comparing us to other industrialized countries, when it comes to the quality of the care provided. Yet, we have some of the finest medical schools and pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical devices industries,... second to none.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow is it possible ?
Because the control of the quality of delivery of care is in the hands of those who profit the most from medical errors, complications and unnecessary procedures.
In fact, we have a 21st century Medicine in a medieval legal environment, the Health Care Quality Improvement Act, HCQIA.
Hence, the most cost effective strategy to reduce significantly Healthcare Costs is by amending the HCQIA, thereby increasing the quality of delivery of care to our patients, as these are not mutually exclusive.
In "The Cost of Courage: How the Tables turn on Doctors" , Steve Twedt, Post-Gazette, 10/26/2003, writes:
"Physicians who spoke up about poor care faced reprisals, including peer review hearings, demotions, temporary loss of credentials, involuntary transfers or outright dismissal. "
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/03299/234499.stm
A chilling CODE of SILENCE permeates the whole system. It is administered by hospital administrators and their attorneys.
One must distinguish peer review, which is collegial and educational, from peer review discipline hearings which are adversarial and confrontational. To ask the hospital to play the role of prosecutor and judge simultaneously is not a reasonable expectation. Hence we urge that peer review hearings by conducted by an independent (neutral) body. In my letter to Senator Coburn, dated 11/16/2007, I point out that the expectations of the HCQIA are unreasonable. At Redding, California two physicians in one small facility generated $40 million a year in revenues from patients they subjected to unnecessary cardiac procedures (Coronary, Klaidman 2007). This illustrates the failure of the HCQIA because it relied on: A) corporate hospital executives who profit financially from unnecessary procedures, errors and complications, and B) the physicians who are responsible for such misconduct.
http://allianceforpatientsafety.org/coburn.pdf
Peer review must cover everyone, especially hospital administrators, their attorneys, nurses,... as well as physicians. We now have a corporate health care "system," not merely doctors doing their best. Peer review will best effect its purposes when it reaches the system not just the physicians.
If peer review for best practices, and elimination of risky practices, continues to be solely limited to physicians, its success will be limited, as it s now, as the error may originate from a totally different source. Hence, similarly to the FAA that has jurisdiction over every aspect of the airline industry, from the pilots to the mechanics and manufacturers, we must have an agency with jurisdiction over hospital administrators as well, and the same kind of anonymous reporting of errors system that is so effective for airline safety.
Hospitals' administrators are not the best source to report errors and complications, as they are at times the source of the problem, see: "Peer Review Physician Perspective " PowerPoint Presentation at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American College of Legal Medicine, ACLM. view presentation,
http://www.allianceforpatientsafety.org/Milieikowsky-ACLM-February-2009-with-links.pdf
We have exposed the methods and strategies hospital administrators and their attorneys use to utterly destroy the lives of physicians, nurses,... patients advocates, see:
- Retaliation Against Physicians - Methods and Strategies - Sham Peer Review, http://allianceforpatientsafety.org/retaliation.php
- The Rape of the Peer Review Process in the USA - Sham Peer Review, http://allianceforpatientsafety.org/rprpusa.php
- Retaliation Against Nurses, http://allianceforpatientsafety.org/nurses.php
My testimony before the California Senate and the Small Business Administration (SBA) is available to you on Youtube as well as all the documents submitted at the time, see:
A) "Is Physician Peer Review a Broken System?" Hearing of California Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee, Sacramento, CA, 3/9/2009
Testimony of Gil Mileikowsky, M.D. "Peer Review Victim of Murphy's Law" on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBqzJuWIo3Q&feature=PlayList&p=B731FEC17A393CD5&index=0&playnext=1
Testimony,: http://allianceforpatientsafety.org/ca-senate-testimony.pdf
Appendix to Testimony, http://allianceforpatientsafety.org/ca-senate-appendix.php
B) Death of a Physician's Private Practice - Testimony Before the US Small Business Administration Regulatory Fairness Forum for Small Business, Glendale, CA, 6/14/2007
To View Videos of Testimony, http://allianceforpatientsafety.org/sba-video.php
To Read Testimony, http://allianceforpatientsafety.org/sba.pdf
To Read Appendix to Testimony, http://allianceforpatientsafety.org/sba-appendix.php
Gil Mileikowsky MD - http://allianceforpatientsafety.org/socalphysgm.pdf
Our country spends twice as much per capita on healthcare compared to Europe or Japan. Unfortunately, we do not get what we pay for, as the US is dead last in every international study comparing us to other industrialized countries, when it comes to the quality of the care provided. Yet, we have some of the finest medical schools and pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical devices industries,... second to none.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow is it possible ?
Because the control of the quality of delivery of care is in the hands of those who profit the most from medical errors, complications and unnecessary procedures.
In fact, we have a 21st century Medicine in a medieval legal environment, the Health Care Quality Improvement Act, HCQIA.
Hence, the most cost effective strategy to reduce significantly Healthcare Costs is by amending the HCQIA, thereby increasing the quality of delivery of care to our patients, as these are not mutually exclusive.
In "The Cost of Courage: How the Tables turn on Doctors" , Steve Twedt, Post-Gazette, 10/26/2003, writes:
"Physicians who spoke up about poor care faced reprisals, including peer review hearings, demotions, temporary loss of credentials, involuntary transfers or outright dismissal. "
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/03299/234499.stm
A chilling CODE of SILENCE permeates the whole system. It is administered by hospital administrators and their attorneys.
One must distinguish peer review, which is collegial and educational, from peer review discipline hearings which are adversarial and confrontational. To ask the hospital to play the role of prosecutor and judge simultaneously is not a reasonable expectation. Hence we urge that peer review hearings by conducted by an independent (neutral) body. In my letter to Senator Coburn, dated 11/16/2007, I point out that the expectations of the HCQIA are unreasonable. At Redding, California two physicians in one small facility generated $40 million a year in revenues from patients they subjected to unnecessary cardiac procedures (Coronary, Klaidman 2007). This illustrates the failure of the HCQIA because it relied on: A) corporate hospital executives who profit financially from unnecessary procedures, errors and complications, and B) the physicians who are responsible for such misconduct.
http://allianceforpatientsafety.org/coburn.pdf
Peer review must cover everyone, especially hospital administrators, their attorneys, nurses,... as well as physicians. We now have a corporate health care "system," not merely doctors doing their best. Peer review will best effect its purposes when it reaches the system not just the physicians.
If peer review for best practices, and elimination of risky practices, continues to be solely limited to physicians, its success will be limited, as it s now, as the error may originate from a totally different source. Hence, similarly to the FAA that has jurisdiction over every aspect of the airline industry, from the pilots to the mechanics and manufacturers, we must have an agency with jurisdiction over hospital administrators as well, and the same kind of anonymous reporting of errors system that is so effective for airline safety.
Hospitals' administrators are not the best source to report errors and complications, as they are at times the source of the problem, see: "Peer Review Physician Perspective " PowerPoint Presentation at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American College of Legal Medicine, ACLM. view presentation,
http://www.allianceforpatientsafety.org/Milieikowsky-ACLM-February-2009-with-links.pdf
We have exposed the methods and strategies hospital administrators and their attorneys use to utterly destroy the lives of physicians, nurses,... patients advocates, see:
- Retaliation Against Physicians - Methods and Strategies - Sham Peer Review, http://allianceforpatientsafety.org/retaliation.php
- The Rape of the Peer Review Process in the USA - Sham Peer Review, http://allianceforpatientsafety.org/rprpusa.php
- Retaliation Against Nurses, http://allianceforpatientsafety.org/nurses.php
My testimony before the California Senate and the Small Business Administration (SBA) is available to you on Youtube as well as all the documents submitted at the time, see:
A) "Is Physician Peer Review a Broken System?" Hearing of California Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee, Sacramento, CA, 3/9/2009
Testimony of Gil Mileikowsky, M.D. "Peer Review Victim of Murphy's Law" on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBqzJuWIo3Q&feature=PlayList&p=B731FEC17A393CD5&index=0&playnext=1
Testimony,: http://allianceforpatientsafety.org/ca-senate-testimony.pdf
Appendix to Testimony, http://allianceforpatientsafety.org/ca-senate-appendix.php
B) Death of a Physician's Private Practice - Testimony Before the US Small Business Administration Regulatory Fairness Forum for Small Business, Glendale, CA, 6/14/2007
To View Videos of Testimony, http://allianceforpatientsafety.org/sba-video.php
To Read Testimony, http://allianceforpatientsafety.org/sba.pdf
To Read Appendix to Testimony, http://allianceforpatientsafety.org/sba-appendix.php
Gil Mileikowsky MD - http://allianceforpatientsafety.org/socalphysgm.pdf
The death toll for medical accidents is higher than in "fatal" car crashes (which being fatal, is 100%). Maybe a little exaggeration.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOften the over worked staff are foregoing mandated JCAHO safety procedures to hurry patients along. It's been my experience that someone else along the patient care process line will have to do it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis country is full of physicians who still live by the policy of if there is a pill for that you should take it, rather than find the underliying cause of whatever the problem is. This is the reason so many elderly people have such an extensive "med list" with 10-20 prescriptions taken daily...this one for the symptoms of that one and on and on. It would be so much more cost effective to treat the cause of the blood pressure in the first place, with diet, exercise, weight loss, etc. but that wouldn't be good for the doctor (no patients) the insurance companies, or the pharmaceutical companies (no more pills) so that is never going to happen!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn China,medical erro is often happen!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe crucial point is whether doctors and nurses have enough responsibility.
How many abortions were in your little tiny town? Medical doctors genocided over 50-million US citizens in USA, since US Supreme Court legalized genocide in Roe v Wade in 1973. Gotta make room for 50-million illegal aliens, so far...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy aunt is a neurologist paid $1-million a year. She told me she never cured anybody, just took all their money until they ran out of insurance or died.
To eradicate a problem, first we must understand what causes that problem. So what is the cause of these "avoidable" errors. One more thing - before castigating medicine and medical practitioners; has anybody analysed the number of "certain" deaths that have been prevented by modern medicine and its practitioners. Or just recall the age of black death and similar historical events before blurping analogies like 9/11 and all soldiers kileed in history etc etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou said Obama will kill more if everyone is insured. That is your opinion. Do you think it is fair that a human being like you should lose someone they love e.g. a child because they lack health insurance? Have a heart before you make conclusions. That is the uncaring side of a doctor showing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConsider this in the context of the performance of other industries. Were the aviation industry performing at the same rate of success as the health care industry, there would be 16 planes falling out of the sky each day, 365 days a year.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt may not be reasonable to expect that it will ever be as safe to go to a hospital as it is to board an airliner, but how can we accept that American hospitals kill 548 patients every day?
Emphasis should be on quality--not quantity. Also, big pharma is part of the problem folks! For starters, lets stop them from adverstizing on TV.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf the health care industry was an airline, they would be shut down in months. I think that Obama is well intended but the emphasis should be on quality -- not quantity. A good place to start is stop big pharma from advertizing on TV.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn 2003, the Institute of Medicine estimated that, close to 20,000 preventable deaths occur, each year, in the US, due to lack of health insurance. Since 2003, numbers of uninsured have continued to rise. In light of these medical error preventable death estimates, the Institute of Medicine's 2003 estimate is, either a gross under estimation, or, by implication, sick people are more at risk from receiving medical care than from no care! I suspect that the former is more likely than the latter. Even with the 2003 probable under estimation, simple math leads one to conclude that, at very least, about 160,000 sick Americans died, due to lack of health insurance, in eight years elapsed between September 11, 2001, and September 11, 2009.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn 2003, the Institute of Medicine estimated that, close to 20,000 preventable deaths occur in the US, each year, due to lack of health insurance. Since 2003, numbers of uninsured have continued to rise. In view of these preventable deaths from medical error estimates, either the Institute's 2003 figure represents a gross under estimation, or, by implication, sick people run a higher risk by receiving medical care than from no medical care! I suspect the former is the case, rather than the latter. Even using 2003's probable under estimation, simple math would lead one to conclude that, at very least, about 160,000 Americans died from lack of health insurance, in the eight years elapsed between September 11, 2001, and September 11, 2009.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think Edison said it best Doc......."The Doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest her or his patients in the care of the human frame, in a proper diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease." (Thomas A. Edison) This is how we change the healthcare system or should i say our sickcare system!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMedical mistakes have grown so much higher that the ratio of deaths caused due to this has increased. We can say that it may be a negligence of the medical care department or they are in a hurry to do the things. One surgery is completed then another surgery and like this. This can be checked if they are cautious about the patient rather than other things. But sometimes it is not their mistake but the scissors or other things which they use get covered with blood such that they couldn't find it out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishealthexplorer.hubpages.com/hub/Urgent-Care-Centers-A-Popular-Destination-for-Minor-but-Unavoidable-Problems