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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: 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.