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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: 3, Interesting) by Adamsjas on Sunday September 25 2016, @07:04PM
"Let the insurance lobby write the most recent healthcare bill, what we have now."
Is the sky purple in your world, or have you just been in a drug induced coma for the last 7 years?
Since Obama care, the insurance industry is leaving the health care industry faster than shoppers at a mall shooting, costs have skyrocketed, coverage has actually declined. And all that because the insurance industry got their way?
Maybe read some news once in a while?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 25 2016, @07:31PM
What the hell are you talking about? Are you talking about insurers leaving AHIP?
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 25 2016, @10:47PM
The insurance companies pulling out of Obamacare recently have pulled out for political reasons driven mainly by spite. They weren't allowed to merge, so they said they're taking their ball and going home by pulling out of regions where they are profitable. Not quite the indictment you make it out to be.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday September 26 2016, @01:11AM
The quote below is from a letter from Aetna's CEO to the Department of Justice. Note the second sentence. After the proposed merger was nixed, the company did withdraw from insurance markets.
Our analysis to date makes clear that if the deal were challenged and/or blocked we would need to take immediate actions to mitigate public exchange and ACA small group losses. Specifically, if the DOJ sues to enjoin the transaction, we will immediately take action to reduce our 2017 exchange footprint. We currently plan, as part of our strategy following the acquisition, to expand from 15 states in 2016 to 20 states in 2017. However, if we are in the midst of litigation over the Humana transaction, given the risks described above, we will not be able to expand to the five additional states. In addition, we would also withdraw from at least five additional states where generating a market return would take too long for us to justify, given the costs associated with a potential breakup of the transaction. In other words, instead of expanding to 20 states next year, we would reduce our presence to no more than 10 states. We also would not be in a position to provide assistance to failing cooperative exchanges as we did in Iowa recently.
--http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/08/17/490202346/aetna-ceo-to-justice-department-block-our-deal-and-well-drop-out-of-exchanges [npr.org]
further coverage:
https://duckduckgo.com/html?q=%22if+the+deal+were+challenged+and%2For+blocked%22 [duckduckgo.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 25 2016, @11:15PM
Since Obama care, the insurance industry is leaving the health care industry faster than shoppers at a mall shooting
Good riddance, parasites.
Middlemen only bloat up costs.
Maybe now folks in gov't will realize that Single-Payer was the way to go from the start.
...and it was Ronmeycare before it was Obamacare.
Before that, it came out of a Right-^Wrong-Wing "think" tank.
costs have skyrocketed
The starting point you picked for that seems quite arbitrary.
One thing that Obamacare -did- do was cap overhead|administrative costs AKA profits.
-That- is why the for-profit parasites have been bailing out.
Obamacare "caps" the profit of an insurance company [at] 20 cents to the dollar [1] [investmentwatchblog.com]
(There used to be some weasels that skimmed off 35 percent.)
[1] Horrible page design and their HTML is awful. [w3.org]
It's so bad that the No Style trick makes it even worse.
I had to use my Aardvark extension and the [i] command (isolate the middle column) to make it less than awful.
coverage has actually declined
Unemployed people without any income qualify for state-provided healthcare coverage.
They then no longer need to go to the price-gougers for coverage.
I note that healthcare cooperatives have also declined and I find that disappointing.
because the insurance industry got their way
That's as close to a proper explanation as any.
They -really- hated the logical alternative. See "Single-Payer", above.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]