Posted on 09/24/2012 6:00:51 AM PDT by TurboZamboni
When there is a plane crash in the U.S., even a minor one, it makes headlines. There is a thorough federal investigation, and the tragedy often yields important lessons for the aviation industry. Pilots and airlines thus learn how to do their jobs more safely.
The world of American medicine is far deadlier: Medical mistakes kill enough people each week to fill four jumbo jets. But these mistakes go largely unnoticed by the world at large, and the medical community rarely learns from them. The same preventable mistakes are made over and over again, and patients are left in the dark about which hospitals have significantly better (or worse) safety records than their peers.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
As much as humanly possible, stay the hell out of them. As obamacare ripens to full maturity, this goes double for the old people.
good point, just did read the whole thing.
dr hodad, scary. probably an alchy
My late SO, who was 46 when he died, and took sick with pulminary blood clots, after being treated at the hospital in first the ICU than on the heart/lungs floor, and when it seems he was getting better, a blood clot went to his heart and he died, when I visited him for hte short time he was there, I did see a catheter and I do wonder................:(
YOU ASSUMED THE HOSPITAL DID SOMETHING WRONG, RIGHT?
Who said anything about suing? I was contesting the $30,000 in unnecessary testing that appeared on my $100,000 bill. My insurance company disallowed the expenses. My consultant agreed with my insurance company. And the doctors admitted that if it weren't for the malpractice exposure, they would not have conducted those particular tests -- my medical record didn't support the need for those later tests.
I particularly like your line "your 'cause of action' would be they took too good care of you?" Actually, they exposed me to risks that weren't warranted by the information in my chart. Not every test is harmless. When it can do harm and also not show anything useful, that's "something wrong."
Don't take my word for it. My doctor admitted it. The administrator admitted it. If they were guided by enforceable-in-court best practices and not malpractice case law, the doctors would never would have put me through that MRI for example.
And even thought it's none of your business: the tests were unrelated to my heart condition. I was already long past the dying part.
And five years later, I'm still paying off the hospital.
“Sloppy work, horrible outcome”
Yes it was a horrible outcome and never should have happened but when the hospital is run like a factory where productivity is the only concern these are the consequences.
When I was 16 I worked in a pocketbook factory where everyone was on piecework. The more you produced, the more money you made. Unfortunately this also produced inferior workmanship as noted by the enormous pile of returns of defective items from our custmers.
Forward two years later when I started working in a hopital laboratory. It was heaven. No one rushed ,we got coffee breaks, and results were checked and double checked. Now fast forward 35 years later. Two people are working where there had been 8. No money for a secretary so you are answering phone calls and giving out results while you are running analyzers, setting up hand test, packaging up send outs, and scanning blood films so patients don’t have to wait for their chemo. When you finally say I can’t do this anymore your supervisor comes in and tells you she is adding on another layer of responsibilities . When productivity, fewer people doing more work, becomes the standard in a hospital there will always be horrible consequences. Hospitals need fewer vice-presidents and more skilled workers.
there could be a lot of ‘accidental’ deaths of oldsters. especially ones who are a ‘drag on society’.
This is why we got to get Romney elected come November. I fear for my country if Obama get re-elected.
When I was in the hospital this summer, I was asked questions about the stuff that I brought, which was the clothes on my back and my pocketbook and bag of Bible and spirtual books. I was having a rough first night in the hospital.
I found out all I needed to know when visiting a cancer center to take my Dad for chemo. There I found they have little to no interest in addressing the root cause of the cancer. In the waiting room was an Icee machine full of acid and sugar. In effect they are feeding cancer patients more acid and more sugar thereby giving the cancer cells exactly what they need to thrive. I was appalled.
I understand nothing tastes right when the patient is pumped full of poison. Often cold beverages are something that’s well tolerated. However encouraging more sugar and acidic intake is an abomination.
A pretty bold but UNSUBSTANTIATED (so far) statement. Also are they configured in 3 class service or all coach? Figures lie...liars figure.
Ditto. 'Hospitals are the most dangerous place on earth.'
They found and removed a polyp, which they cut and cauterized, rather than clamped, which is what the should have done, given it's size.
When you're a cancer survivor and its been 14 years since your last “inspection”.....then it's time.
When imperfect results wind up with you dead you have a pretty solid reason to demand perfection.
I wish the CDC/WHO would worry about medical errors as much as they worry about who owns a gun.
What you describe is actually becoming fairly common. It sounds silly, but something so silly can dramatically reduce medical misadventure. Any doctor who would object to something like this needs to be run away from.
Similar thing happened to my Mother-in-Law. Had some major surgery and the idiot nurses didn’t elevate the legs or put pressure garment on them, and nearly killed her with blood clots.
“This is about a system where nobody double checks ANYTHING!
As they assume somebody else checked.”
As a computer systems analyst and network engineer in a corporate environment for 25 years, I essentially assumed that no one I worked with did their job correctly, and I double checked everything that someone else did or claimed.
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