SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
It seems that every time researchers estimate how often a medical mistake contributes to a hospital patient's death, the numbers come out worse.
[...] In 2010, the Office of Inspector General for Health and Human Services said that bad hospital care contributed to the deaths of 180,000 patients in Medicare alone in a given year.
Now comes a study in the current issue of the Journal of Patient Safety that says the numbers may be much higher — between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year who go to the hospital for care suffer some type of preventable harm that contributes to their death, the study says.
That would make medical errors the third-leading cause of death in America, behind heart disease, which is the first, and cancer, which is second.
The new estimates were developed by John T. James, a toxicologist at NASA's space center in Houston who runs an advocacy organization called Patient Safety America. James has also written a book about the death of his 19-year-old son after what James maintains was negligent hospital care.
Asked about the higher estimates, a spokesman for the American Hospital Association said the group has more confidence in the IOM's estimate of 98,000 deaths. ProPublica asked three prominent patient safety researchers to review James' study, however, and all said his methods and findings were credible.
[...] Dr. David Mayer, the vice president of quality and safety at Maryland-based MedStar Health, said people can make arguments about how many patient deaths are hastened by poor hospital care, but that's not really the point. All the estimates, even on the low end, expose a crisis, he said.
"Way too many people are being harmed by unintentional medical error," Mayer said, "and it needs to be corrected."
The story describes additional studies that were performed and then solicited feedback from other doctors who supported the view that the 98,000 figure underreports the problem and that the situation warrants further investigation, reporting, and action.
Have any Soylentils personally experienced or observed medical mistakes that had an adverse outcome? Alternatively, has anyone experienced a medical triumph in the face of very poor odds for a positive outcome? What about medical treatments in countries besides the US?
(Score: 5, Informative) by jmoschner on Sunday September 25 2016, @05:36PM
The head of dermatology at VU Medical (formerly Fletcher Allen) couldn't identify a topological yeast infection my wife got while at the hospital.
When having heart surgery, she contracted an infection because the pacemaker they put it wasn't properly situated and caused a break in the skin. An infection they didn't even properly diagnose and required her to have an additional hospitalization and surgery (had her taken to another hospital in a different state for her future care).
When she first had signs of infection and went into the ER, the staff didn't notice she was having an allergic reaction to an antibiotic and I had to flag down nurses in the hallway, who were at first dismissive until I began yelling.
Watched doctors give conflicting medical diagnosis and advice while in the same room, and i had to step up and point that out.
Had an ER doctor admit to not reading my wife's chart before trying to give a diagnosis that would have been harmful.
Unfortunately, the hospital was the largest in the state and no lawyer would take the case and the doctors would blatantly lie or misdirect to cover up for each other. I took her to another hospital, fired her doctors, and she has been healthy ever since. The care she received there was so bad, that psychiatrists at the new hospital believe she suffered PTSD due to the horrible experiences that nearly killed her. Again even with clear cut evidence of malpractice, no lawyers would take the case as the hospital had too much money and political connections and would rather bankrupt someone in court than settle.
Doctor's in Indiana at one hospital misdiagnosed a friend's grandfather and their subsequent lack of administering proper medical care led to his death. The doctors there immediately went into CYA mode.
Had doctors at St. Mary's in Evansville, IN not properly diagnosis sleep apnea because apparently they didn't fully review the data from the sleep study and tried to withhold releasing my records and the data. It took several times of dealing with the administration and then contacting the Priest and getting the church side of the hospital involved to get the doctors to do what they were legally supposed to do. They also didn't like me pointing out their errors and showing them in their data (which they didn't even give me all of it as they deleted data before I could get it) where they missed things and the mistakes they made.
What really sucks about the medical world is that often hospitals are big economic players with lots of money and political pull so they can easily sweep things under the rug. Also doctors and nurses cover for the mistakes of the doctors. Administrators don't want actual numbers to come to light on how often problems happen or the hospital is at fault. SO they either cover things up or choose to find a way to have plausible deniability when things come to light. It doesn't help that those creating the records and noting what was or wasn't done and how things happen are the people making the mistakes in the first place. It is very easy for them to blame an injury or condition they caused on something else as they are the ones making the diagnosis.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 25 2016, @07:02PM
I think part of the problem is that doctors are so overworked that they see too many patients all at once and they get little sleep. Little sleep plus little time to review the charts of each patient due to too many patients = disaster.
One possibility is to make it so that more people can more easily enter the medical profession so that work can be more evenly distributed. Of course the status quo doesn't like that because more people entering their labor force will drive down wages. So the status quo will do what they can to prevent this. Also if more people are allowed to enter more easily you may drive down the quality of medical practitioners. OTOH you have more people with experience in the field as well and more people looking at a problem can be a good thing.
Both extremes are bad. Too many people in the medical field could be indicative of poor screening and hence too many people that shouldn't be practitioners. Too few people in the medical field and you create an unrealistic workload for those that make it as practitioners and hence their quality falters since they aren't getting enough rest and the amount of time they can dedicate to each patient is not much. The trick is to find the right balance.
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Monday September 26 2016, @01:01AM
duh, they prescribe the coke to dead mrs johnson, so they can take a bump to make it through the shift, to make the mis-diagnosis on mrs smith who dies, so they can prescribe coke for her, so they can take a bump to make it through the shift, to make the mis-diagnosis on mr jones who dies, so they can prescribe coke for him... etc ad infinitum...
i think we have found a perpetual motion machine ! ! !
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday September 26 2016, @01:32AM
By 1900, Americans could walk into any pharmacy and purchase a gram of pure cocaine for 25 cents. Cocaine was one of the country’s five best-selling pharmaceuticals that year. [...] By 1902, upwards of 200,000 Americans were cocaine addicts. A disproportionate number of these addicts were doctors, dentists, and pharmacists – who faced a disastrous combination of stressful, high-stakes work and easy access to piles of cocaine.
-- http://mentalfloss.com/article/57988/11-unbelievable-moments-cocaines-early-medical-history [mentalfloss.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 25 2016, @09:01PM
What is really amazing is that some one with such superior medical knowledge would need to submit himself to such quacks in the first place!
They also didn't like me pointing out their errors and showing them in their data (which they didn't even give me all of it as they deleted data before I could get it) where they missed things and the mistakes they made.
You can find errors in data that doesn't even exist? Truly amazing! And all this without the slightest amount of medical training? Wow.
who were at first dismissive until I began yelling.
It is very easy for them to blame an injury or condition they caused on something else as they are the ones making the diagnosis.
Especially when the diagnosis is hypochondria and practicing medicine without a license! Hey, tell us some horror stories about psychiatry!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Monday September 26 2016, @01:10AM
Sorry, but your sarcasm is unwarranted. My wife was admitted to a hospital, but because of a bed shortage she was placed in the neurology ward rather than the cardiac ward. She nearly died because of this. The doctors were doing everything they knew how, but they weren't cardiac specialists, and had written her off as a goner. I basically threw a fit to get her to move them to the cardiac ward, where even the nurses knew how to treat her kind of condition, and she improved immediately.
There's so much specialization that frequently doctors don't know what's going on outside their specialty. I didn't know how she should be treated, but I knew certain features that the treatment should contain (like a telemetry reading of her heart rhythms). This is because I've been with her in such places before.
Well, she had fallen and hit her head, so the neurology ward wasn't totally unreasonable. But it was unreasonable for HER. The reason she had fallen was her heart problem. I think that's finally been resolved after several operations...and the initial problem was scarring caused by open heart surgery to repair a ventral cardiac defect. She's still got a few heart problems that they consider too dangerous to address...a leaky valve, e.g. I've got no idea how to address those problems, but this doesn't keep me from knowing certain basic features about the kind of treatment she needs.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.