Group: Medical Errors Still Killing 98,000 Each Year (More than guns- Ban Doctors!)

Foxnews ^ | 5/20/2009 | Staff

[Red in Blue PA]

Despite a decade of promises, little has been done to fix the problem of preventable medical errors that kill nearly 98,000 people in the United States each year, a consumer group said on Tuesday.

Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, said lawmakers largely have failed to enact patient safety reforms recommended by a 1999 report by the Institute of Medicine or IOM that found that medical errors cost the United States $17 billion to $29 billion a year.

[neodad]

No, get the government involved more.

[3catsanadog]

Nationalized health care will solve this problem once and for all.

/sarcasm

[Dixie Yooper]

Doctors don't kill patients...Surgical instruments do.

[theDentist]

Wait’ll they’re government run.... that number will drop because fewer people wil get permission to get the appropriate treatment from Obamacare..... ‘specially the elderly.

[2harddrive]

UNLIKE with arms, there is NO Constitutional Right to medical care - not at ANY price! Nevertheless, when doctors are outlawed, only outlaws will be doctors.

[from occupied ga]

Doctors don't kill patients...Surgical instruments do.

Not really - most are killed by being given the wrong medicine or improper dose.

[kittymyrib]

Remember the doctors’ strike that shut hospitals down about 20 years ago...and they had to settle their strike because the mortality rate was declining so embarrassingly?

Stay out of the doctor’s office and hospital if at all possible. Many patients go in for some minor matter and do not survive the experience.

[Obadiah]

Why do you think they call it a “practice”.

Q) Know what they call the guy who finishes last in his class in Medical School?

A) doctor

[Red in Blue PA]

Do you have a link for that? I would certainly be interested.

[a fool in paradise]

They aren’t going to outlaw doctors. They will be treated like prostitutes. If you pay them for it, it’s a crime.

[lovecraft]

According to the CDC numbers I found, 30,896 people die of gun related incidents each year. You are 3 times more likely of dying from a medical error than a gun. Crazy stuff.

[lacrew]

This information will be used as ammunition to ‘automate’ records, which will be part of the Messiah’s health ‘reforms’.

Fox News is being his stooge.

[longtermmemmory]

so if they outlaw any kind o malpractice suits then those 98,000 will become...? “non standard terminations”? “post birth abortion”? “Administrative Non-life”?

[Red in Blue PA]

According to the CDC numbers I found, 30,896 people die of gun related incidents each year. You are 3 times more likely of dying from a medical error than a gun. Crazy stuff.

[longtermmemmory]

automating medical records is just an excuse, the government wants to know all about our individual lives to the extreme.

The ability to collect personal information is the ability to tax based on personal information.

[toast]

I work for a medical device company. I review reports on patient injuries.

It is scary how many doctors and nurses screw up and can’t follow very simple and straight forward directions (or don’t bother to read them).

[M203M4]

My maternal grandfather was killed (at a relatively young age - before I was born) by a medication mixup which occurred while he was in a hospital bed surrounded by family. He had a mild problem which required the administration of a procoagulant but was instead given a huge dose of anticoagulant at the cusp of a shift change. He bled from everywhere, nose, eyes, ears, etc (my grandmother, who lived through some horrific stuff in WWII, including the death of two children, one violently, fainted) and he was basically dead by the time someone found it appropriate to do their job. Big hospital in Canada. They sent flowers.

My paternal grandfather died slowly because of an injection with a dirty needle, performed at a VA clinic in Florida. (he first suffered paralysis, then lost his feet, then both legs at the knees, then above the knees) He was maybe three or four years into his well-earned retirement when "the regrettable medical error" happened.

No lawsuits or payouts in either case of course.

[bobjam]

If vicitms of medical errors think it’s tough getting settlement from their insurance carrier, wait until they have to get it from Washington.

[3catsanadog]

Where I work, we just fax the prescriptions to the hospital pharmacy. Thank God, because I can hardly read about half of the physicans' med orders. I don't know how the pharmacy manages to fill them.

By the end of 2010, we will have in place the system whereby the physicans key in their own orders. But there are a few old codger doctors who will refuse to do that. They've hand written orders for decades and, by God, they are not going to change now.