A study published in the BMJ found that medical errors may be the third leading cause of death in the United States:
The IOM, based on one study, estimated deaths because of medical errors as high as 98,000 a year. Makary's research involves a more comprehensive analysis of four large studies, including ones by the Health and Human Services Department's Office of the Inspector General and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality that took place between 2000 to 2008. His calculation of 251,000 deaths equates to nearly 700 deaths a day — about 9.5 percent of all deaths annually in the United States.
And from the airplane analogy, a simple fix: checklists.
Is it time for a system theory approach to medicine?
Medical error—the third leading cause of death in the US (DOI: 10.1136/bmj.i2139)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Saturday May 14 2016, @10:30AM
I've seen such figures before, but you have to take them with a grain of salt. Many of these are people who were critically ill; they are undergoing complex, risky medical treatment, because they would die without it. If that treatment goes less-than-perfectly, did they die of the treatment or the disease?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2016, @10:34AM
Malpractice defense attorney spotted.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2016, @10:40AM
Not really.
Literally thousands of medical errors happen daily but only a few are life threatening.
This is a tally of those few life threatening ones where the outcome was death. While being critically ill compounds things, these were severe enough where death was a good possibility regardless.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by dak664 on Saturday May 14 2016, @11:11AM
How would you account for longer survival under hospice care, compared to undergoing active treatment?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17349493 [nih.gov]
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2016, @10:31AM
"My husband died due to medical typo!" [smbc-comics.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Saturday May 14 2016, @10:34AM
Raise the professional insurance to the point the patients won't be able to afford the price charged by the medics: they'll start dying of natural causes then.
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2016, @11:04AM
Stay away from doctors and hospitals - that's where the sick people are with their diseases.
(Score: 2, Funny) by martyb on Saturday May 14 2016, @01:01PM
Your comment reminded me of this conversation [imdb.com]:
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday May 14 2016, @02:06PM
That comment's modded "funny" but note that the only way you can get something like MSRA or Ebola in the US is in a hospital.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2016, @02:21PM
Hospitals are also where superbugs [wikipedia.org] dwell. A problem with any antibiotic not 100% effective, which is all of them...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2016, @02:46PM
and Zika
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Saturday May 14 2016, @06:47PM
Why would Zika pose any threat in a modern hospital? especially in any region that is free of mosquitoes?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bitstream on Saturday May 14 2016, @06:45PM
People get Ebola in modern hospitals because of sloppy management. It can be handled if done properly. But with improper procedures [theguardian.com] and sometimes staff that don't follow them. Bad things happen.
Very complex and volatile processes can be handled in a modern setting. BUT whenever people get lax about it they will suffer the consequences instantly. This goes for space faring, nuclear reactors, complex control system design, dangerous biology, reactive substances, extreme physics etc. You can negotiate and cheat people but nature won't budge at all, ever.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2016, @11:04AM
1. Mistaken diagnosis
2. Unnecessary procedures
3. Poor surgical or procedural execution
4. Improper sterilization, left equipment inside patient, etc. (checklist probably would have helped)
5. Misprint or misread dosage on bottle (checklist possibly could've helped)
6. Patient infected in hospital (in some cases, checklist could've helped)
There's probably a bunch more.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Justin Case on Saturday May 14 2016, @12:05PM
Poor ... procedural execution
People just hate to follow procedure. Nope, I'm too smart. Telling me how to do my own job is insulting.
Try getting your local MCSE to set up three PCs the same way by following a written checklist. Better chance you'll win the lottery.
This is why entry level jobs are being replaced by machines. Machines follow instructions.
I have a relative who works in healthcare. Even when the nurse's own life is on the line (Ebola, for example) they won't do what they're told.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday May 14 2016, @03:15PM
Following instructions correctly is a superpower -- especially when the instructions are wrong.
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Saturday May 14 2016, @03:40PM
Instructions can have bugs. That's what software is -- instructions. The computer mindlessly and exactly obeys them for better or for worse.
But imagine a compiler that magically "cleaned up" your bugs... 30% of the time... and also injected its own bugs... 90% of the time. How would you ever find the flaws in the source code and get them corrected?
If a human notices a flaw in their job instructions, ideally they should be reported and fixed. Alternately they may be followed so that the instruction writer can discover the bug and fix it. But don't just say "Oh, this doesn't look right to me. I think instead I'll leave the flaps down throughout the entire flight."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2016, @04:09PM
But imagine a compiler that magically "cleaned up" your bugs... 30% of the time... and also injected its own bugs... 90% of the time. How would you ever find the flaws in the source code and get them corrected?
No need to imagine, it happens often enough. Ever tried to debug a segfault in C/C++? Compiling with the debug switch turned on often "fixes" the problem... Ergo, most of my code is littered with commented out printf's on the pattern of "entered function xyz", "for loop start" etc.
<mutter>Goddamn Heisenbugs...</mutter>
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Saturday May 14 2016, @06:51PM
When a human finds an error in the list of instruction that can.. Halt and burn the management ;-)
A flamethrower makes the task easier :p
(Score: 4, Insightful) by CirclesInSand on Saturday May 14 2016, @11:25AM
Depending on how you choose to segregate causes of death, you can make almost anything the n-th leading cause of death.
One could say the #1 leading cause of death is the failure of oxygen to reach cells. One could say old age is a leading cause of death, or separate all the problems of old age into separate categories and list them individually as uncommon causes of death.
It would be meaningful to say "cause of death X is more common than cause of death Y" or "cause of death X affects p% of the population", but "cause of death X is the n-th leading cause of death" isn't even a meaningful statement.
(Score: 3, Funny) by khchung on Saturday May 14 2016, @02:06PM
No, the #1 leading cause of death is being alive in the first place.
What is dead may never die. :)
(Score: 3, Funny) by hendrikboom on Saturday May 14 2016, @03:17PM
That is not dead which can eternal lie
And with strange eons even death may die.
(Score: 2) by Anne Nonymous on Saturday May 14 2016, @04:53PM
Just don't eat any bread and you'll be ok.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2016, @03:28PM
> Depending on how you choose to segregate causes of death, you can make almost anything the n-th leading cause of death.
Its always best to read what people said before criticizing them for what they said,
From the paper: [sci-hub.cc]
Medical error has been defined as an unintended act (either of
omission or commission) or one that does not achieve its
intended outcome, the failure of a planned action to be
completed as intended (an error of execution), the use of a wrong
plan to achieve an aim (an error of planning), or a deviation
from the process of care that may or may not cause harm to the
patient.
(Score: 2) by CirclesInSand on Saturday May 14 2016, @03:42PM
How you define medical error is irrelevant to the point. The problem is that everything else can be partitioned arbitrarily to invent the statistic.
Another funny thing is that medical error being an increasing cause of death by % isn't necessarily a bad thing. It could just mean that treatment is really effective, and you only die if someone screws up.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Saturday May 14 2016, @09:08PM
Depending on how you choose to segregate causes of death, you can make almost anything the n-th leading cause of death.
Read the article. It's a standard segregation of causes of death by the US government. Anything that becomes the third cause of death has to kill on average at least 147k people in the US per year to achieve that (to beat out respiratory diseases which are traditionally in third place). And death due to medical error is a significant distinguishing factor unlike cell death. So we have a significant number of deaths per year coupled with a significant distinction, that means there is meaning here.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Saturday May 14 2016, @11:54AM
A proper investment in more advanced automated surgical machinery as well as having emergency animation suspension systems [bbc.com] in place to buy more time to repair a body in the event of serious complications would reduce the number of deaths due to medical errors. Machines can help people survive surgery but only if we choose to build them.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2016, @01:52PM
Then they'll just die due to programming errors.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2016, @03:33PM
Yes, let's go with the most complicated and expensive option first!
Low-tech approaches like standardizing best practices are just too cost effective.
If I were prone to conspiracy theories I'd say you are promoting a solution that increases employment and remuneration for people like yourself. Funny how we are so quick to accuse people in other fields of corruption, but here we are doing the exact same thing in our field.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by q.kontinuum on Saturday May 14 2016, @01:56PM
If an 80yo dies a week earlier because his 10th fatal disease in the potpourri wasn't diagnosed immediately, it is still a loss, but an otherwise healthy child dying because the doctor made a decimal error with a medication would seem somehow more dramatic to me. I have similar concerns when discussing death - rates caused by cigarettes. If people die 75 instead of 79, so be it (their choice, they should be informed of the risk obviously.) If most smokers would reach the same age as non-smokers, but a more significant percentage catches cancer in a young age, that would overall be a lower death-toll, but probably more alarming...
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mcgrew on Saturday May 14 2016, @02:14PM
About those cigarettes and statistics, they trot out the health care costs of smokers and I just shake my head in wonder that people are so gullible. Grandma never smoked and went to the doctor weekly after age 70, for thirty years, all the while collecting Social Security. My uncle, her son, smoked two packs a day and died of COPD at age 60. Never once visited a doctor on the government's dime, never collected a penny of the Social Security he'd paid into all his life. Not only did his smoking save society money, it earned society some.
The truth of the matter is smokers save society money, because cigarettes don't make you sick, they kill you. Every forty year old smoker who dies of a heart attack saves you tax money.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2016, @02:48PM
and they cause disease in people around them. I have spent years breathing in smokers bad air. How does this factor into your figures?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RedGreen on Saturday May 14 2016, @05:46PM
So how does all the years of breathing in pollution from cars, power plants, etc. figure in your calculations. Which of those will you be blaming when you get sick?
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 2) by legont on Saturday May 14 2016, @06:55PM
Well, a child has very little economic value as well as an old man. In fact children dying off is probably good for overall health of the species. Effective medicine should target people of 20-50 - the most productive age - who, conveniently, don't get sick that much. Based on pure efficiency, society medical expenses could be cut 2 orders of magnitude easily with better overall results. The US healthcare does exactly the opposite.
Note that this is not what I propose. This is what an efficient market would do if it ever come to be.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 15 2016, @07:49AM
There's already an accepted metric in the field. Loss of "quality-adjusted life years". Not everyone's years are the same. Tube-breathing wheelchair-bound 60 year old on a morphine drip croaks it after a boobed procedure - very few QALYs lost.
(Score: 1) by Meepy on Saturday May 14 2016, @06:06PM
If you want to read something with more actual information on the topic:
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/are-medical-errors-really-the-third-most-common-cause-of-death-in-the-u-s/ [sciencebasedmedicine.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 15 2016, @05:50AM
The people involved in the medical industry and research just must be competently and honestly doing their jobs. I don't see why there is so much resistance to considering the alternative. You can find errors with any study, but most people don't bother unless it reflects badly on the current medical system.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 15 2016, @06:33AM