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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 25 2016, @06:35PM
Your inability to extract facts from the summary doesn't make something a non sequitur. Here:
The new estimates were developed by John T. James .... James has also written a book about the death of his 19-year-old son after what James maintains was negligent hospital care.
While it's tragic that this fellow's son died according to what HE believes to be medical errors, no one ended up sued or in jail so either the rest of the world disagrees or there's this massive conspiracy theory covering up doctors who commit these mistakes - despite Dr. James himself being a physician. More likely he disagreed with the treatment his son received being a physician himself, and this allows him to displace his anger and other feelings onto other physicians.
Don't get me wrong - mistakes do happen. However this guy is hardly an impartial source of information. Ergo - he is a crusader on a mission, kind of like MADD which is a good idea in theory but if you actually listen to them they are all rabid, fanatical crackpots. You might want to look up the meaning of non sequitur, because my comment follows perfectly.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 25 2016, @06:42PM
Your ability create facts that don't exist doesn't make someone a crusader.
> no one ended up sued or in jail so either the rest of the world disagrees
Or... being the underdog is damn hard and lack of legal success is not proof of incorrectness.
Nah, that couldn't be it. The world is perfectly fair and everything works out the way it is supposed too.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 25 2016, @09:30PM
no one ended up sued or in jail so either the rest of the world disagrees or there's this massive conspiracy theory covering up doctors who commit these mistakes
It is often hard to bring doctors and hospitals to justice. They often have the money and resources to keep all but the most blatant malpractice (like cutting off the wrong leg) from coming back on them. It doesn't help that hospitals get to decide if it was their fault a patient died. There is no independent review of every death or complaint. Even if there is, the records are created and controlled by the doctors that messed up in the first place.
When lawsuits happen, they have the lawyers and cash reserves to keep lawsuits in court so long it bankrupts those that were harmed. When a hospital nearly killed someone in my family, made multiple mistakes, misdiagnoses, and were caught in lies, still no lawyer would take on the case. I was told flat out that the hospital would fight it and drag it out for years far beyond what I could afford. I was even told off the record, I was working in news at the time, by some lawyers that they were not willing to take on the state's largest employer who had just about every local politician in their pocket as it would be career suicide.
Many local news outlets won't run a story as the hospitals spend millions a year on advertising, sponsors events the stations are allied with, and are needed to get info and access for stories. So they get a free pass screwing people over and causing deaths.
Even at that, it is a case of people covering up for their own mistakes and those of their coworkers. It happens at a lot of jobs. People out to save their own skin. It isn't like they are going to stop making sick people or that many hospitals are going to stop having a virtual monopoly in their area. So they can get away with it.