Our Nation Bleeds

is there comparative data for other industrialized nations?  (i've been peripherally aware of this situation for a while but since i tend to whistle when i walk by graveyards, i havent looked into it in hopes it wouldnt impact me.  stupid, i know but...)

A good question, but I don't know, yet suspect, because they have more or less universal health care, they do better. I imagine that many of the errors here are among patients without insurance or on medicaid.

I imagine that many of the errors here are among patients without insurance or on medicaid.

I suspect you are right. It would be interesting to research. A Good, but sad article.

many of the errors here are among patients without insurance or on medicaid

those cases im familiar with (only a handful really) seemed to be equal-opportunity screwups.  a fair amount result from obsolete paper-based patient management systems.

You'll get no arguement from me. As I understand it, we (mankind) have the technological ability to end suffering for every person on earth, but justice doesn't seem to be as blind as we would hope. I share your frustration, I'm open to hearing more about it.

J.

is there comparative data for other industrialized nations?

Yes, there is. I think it's done by the WHO. If I recall correctly the US spends more on health care than any other country but is ranked only 16th in quality of the health care system.

Abe, thanks for the info.

J. Yes, it is sad, particularly when technology is heralded as the wherewithal of social needs.

those cases im familiar with (only a handful really) seemed to be equal-opportunity screwups.

Me too.  Tricare (military medical insurance) has experienced a few such cock-ups, all of which disappeared off the radar as soon as they appeared.

Good article!

So, um, how do you propose fixing this? 'Cause it's a no-brainer to say there are problems, no arguments there.

A good reason for the number of mistakes is because the hospitals are understaffed and underfunded. The reason? People cry lawsuit for every little mistake. I think some people refer to this as the snowball effect? I'm not saying that mistakes should go unpunished. In fact, I do believe people have the right to seek reparations for the damages resulting from such errors. Sorry, I am rambling without a point, though I agree with angloesque in that the problems are obvious.

An interesting comment Psuedo Student....

In New Zealand we have a public health care system that is free to all, it is also a fairly good system the majority of the time. The only unfortunate product of a free system is the large waiting lists for the more involved surgeries.
It is very rare in New Zealand to use lawsuits as a weapon against the system. I don't know whether this is just a cultural thing, or if there really is less 'cause' for it. I know alot of my mates joke about, 'If I'd been in America and this happened, I would have had a lawsuit slapped on me' and other such things. The general (unspoken) opinion is that Americans whip out lawsuits over the slightest trivials in the hope of getting a small slice of the pie for themselves. I don't neccesarily agree with this, I wouldn't know. But I guess some of the american law programs on TV seem to agree with this concept alot of the time.

I wouldn't be surprised if a good portion of the yearly budget of American hospitals went towards massive settlements for lawsuits and court fees. It is a snowball effect, and never underestimate the effect good or bad moral in the workplace can have either. If the doctors, sugeons and nurses are under the impression that nobody in management really appreciates them and that the system doesn't give a damn, then they won't be doing there absolute best all of the time, and mistakes and just sloppy work, is bound to be the result.

...I saw an article the other day about a guy who got stitched up after surgery (in America) with a 30cm metal spatula type device inside his chest cavity. He nearly died. Apparently stuff is left in people quite regularly... but it is usually quite small and relatively harmless... *sigh*

Addendum: Someday I'm going to get a bumper sticker that says "Doctors = humans"

It is very rare in New Zealand to use lawsuits as a weapon against the system

using a civil damage suit to force change in the 'system' isnt quite the same thing as a malpractice suit (although the same end may be achieved) because there is no real system in place (im guessing there would be in a country with national health care).   

that 'not counting all the instruments before closing' incident you mentioned is an example of what would likely be litigated.  if the surgery was provided at no costs, there would be much less reason for taking action.  when youre paying tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for professional services, its not unreasonable to expect the surgical team to conform to professional standards.

i dont believe malpractice suits are responsible for understaffing (i agree understaffing is a serious problem).  nurses have been in very short supply for at least the past 10 years.

No, I don't think malpractice suits would be solely responsible for understaffing either Kingbee... but they could be another contributing factor to the situation.

To be honest, I am not familiar with the situation in America in regards to Healthcare. You are correct Kingbee in that we have national health care here. Watching movies like John Q, and reading articles and documentaries like this is about as far as the exposure goes. To be honest though it would seem there are more problems with a paid health care system than in a national one....

True, I guess there is less reason for people to sue the system if they recieved there health care for free... But I also think that incidents like this are probably more isolated in the system we have here. Possibly this is due to the size of our country, we can perhaps afford to train and maintain a better quality of staff because of there low numbers, or perhaps it is a number of contributing factors, such as the near abscence of malpractice or civil damage suits, which means a better spent budget and a better morale environment for staff and the goverment funded system which gives nobody a 'priority' because of money, class, or anything except there condition.
I'm not having a go at your system here. Ours has many faults to. Just different ones on the whole. But as someone said, everyone seems to know there are problems, but how are they gonna get fixed?

For comparison:

"The first hospital study of its kind in Canada is setting off alarm bells over what appears to be an extremely high number of preventable medical errors.
The study which examined hospital data from the year 2000 suggests that between 9000 and 24,000 patients die each year from preventable medical errors.
When compared to the rate of hospital related errors in the United States, Canada has twice as many, according to similar studies conducted in the U.S. However, when compared to Australia, Britain, and New Zealand studies, Canadian medical error rates came in lower."

A range of 9000 to 24000 would put us at or below the US rate on a per capita basis according to SteveD's numbers, so I'm not sure I agree with the analysis that the Canadian rate is twice as high as the USA. I'd like to see more data. Link

People cry lawsuit for every little mistake.

This article is about wrongful deaths. I worked for over 15 years in the financial area of the healthcare industry. I can tell you from first-hand experience that there is no faster way to get a hospital or medical office to change dangerous or sloppy practices than to sue them.

HMO's and other insurers provide bounties to hospitals nad doctors to reduce costs (to them) by cutting corners. In other words, they pay medical providers to push YOU through the system. Sometimes these incentives result in greater efficiency, sometimes they are dangerous. The only way, as the system stands now, is to tell the providers that if they are too aggressive in cost cutting, that provider can be sued.

For every "little mistake" you will find an equal number of dangerous, life-threatening short-cuts that have been enacted for financial savings. That is why I oppose caps on lawsuits. The insurers will just agree to match the cap by providing reimbursement.

The only pertinent question is whether the doctors involved treated all patients with the same level of care. Doctors, Nurses are just as susceptible to mistakes as any other human being and attributing the mistakes of the health care industry to malicious intent is irresponsible.

Larry Kuperman said:

"HMO's and other insurers provide bounties to hospitals nad doctors to reduce costs (to them) by cutting corners."

Curious. What kinds of things are you talking about?

The fact remains 195,000 deaths due to medical errors is unacceptable, not to mention the 24,000 in Canada. That the medical profession has done wonders is no excuse for foul ups when dealing with human lives. That the death toll of 900 in Iraq would have been tripled if medicine hadn't progressed and the methods of triage transportation doesn't soften the blow of the families of those who died. That a teacher with a class of thirty-five does well should not negate the need for smaller classes to do even better. "Help is on the Way!"

"Help is on the Way!"

How? You still haven't said how you propose fixing this. I wanna know.

(by the way, why won't Mozilla let me use the quote feature? I had to login to Internet Explorer to do it, though I should know the html code by now...)

Just because the deaths were "preventable" does not mean that they were caused by egregious errors.

The study I linked below, while not as comprehensive as nationwide studies, suggests that:

--most of the "preventable" deaths were people who doctors would not expect to survive more than 3 months with sound mental condition.

--There were deaths could have been prevented by more medical care consistent with percentrages in earlier studies, but "We found no instances of egregious mishaps, like inadvertent administration of the wrong medication,''

``While deaths due to medical errors are still extremely important even when patients have very short life expectancies, the correct understanding of these errors may differ substantially from how they have been publicly portrayed to date,'' Hayward and Hofer conclude.

``Our study suggests that the previously reported statistics have been misunderstood,'' Hayward told Reuters Health. ``Both the likelihood that a true error had occurred and the likelihood that an error caused the death have probably been dramatically over-estimated.''

It is important for the public to know, according to Hayward, that most of the ``errors'' reported in studies that review patients' medical charts ``represent difficult medical decisions in very ill people.... In such instances, some physicians will feel that an error occurred and others will not.''

Cancerpage.com

If I recall correctly the US spends more on health care than any other country but is ranked only 16th in quality of the health care system.

The US spends about 15% of GDP on heath care. Other industrialized nations spend roughly half that. Health care in the US is superb if you're rich, and subpar for industrialized nations if you're poor. (I'm not going to look up citations right now, but I'm quite sure about these.)

Although I'm instinctively skeptical of government spending, facts like those make me open to the idea of having a government-run system. There are some rare areas where free markets really don't work best, and health care may very well be one of them.

Larry, I got a logical question for you: You say that insurance companies "provide bounties to hospitals and [sic] doctors to reduce costs (to them) by cutting corners" and that this can be efficient but dangerous. I'm not trying to misquote you--this should be accurate.

If this were true, and I don't see any evidence yet, then insurance companies would be doing themselves a disservice to promote cutting corners if, in effect, there are dangerous outcomes which would result in lawsuits, ergo losing the insurance companies $$$.

Now this is not factual--it's just me thinking about it. Post some examples of these insurance company-induced cut corners. Maybe I'm taking the wrong track.

There are some rare areas where free markets really don't work best, and health care may very well be one of them.

I'm with you on this.

Madine, I grant you that the truth is perhaps somewhere in the middle; nevertheless, we have a serious problem, particularly with life-expectancy continually on the rise. We can't very well write off the elderly.

If this were true, and I don't see any evidence yet, then insurance companies would be doing themselves a disservice to promote cutting corners if, in effect, there are dangerous outcomes which would result in lawsuits, ergo losing the insurance companies $$$.

im sure larry will be able to provide specific examples, but it generally goes like this: the best way of treating condition a costs $x.  another procedure that is effective only 90% of the time costs $.80x.  if you need to perform the procedure 1000 times annually, there is an obvious economic advantage to doing it the cheaper way.  unless it places you in jeopardy of zillion dollar awards.  if you know it wont, why spend money doing it the better way? other than ethics of course.

I'm with you on this.

it makes at least as much sense as 'socialized' interstate highway building.