Recently a New York Daily News article http://www.nydailynews.com * noted: “The U.S. Senate hearing on health care had an unsettling title: “More than 1,000 preventable deaths a day is too many: The need to improve patient safety.But Joanne Disch, a University of Minnesota expert, said it would be more accurate to call it, “More than 1,000 preventable deaths — and 10,000 preventable serious complications a day—is too many.”
“It is a sad reflection on our overpriced, at times incompetent health care that much data is as unreliable as one fact is clear: huge numbers of people needlessly die in hospitals and after they’re discharged.”
“We’ve not moved the needle in any demonstrable way. We are not substantially better off than we were,” Adish Jha of the Harvard School of Public Health…..”Jha, who is also a practicing internist, was alluding to a landmark study that concluded 100,000 hospital patients die yearly due to totally preventable medical mistakes. That was nearly 15 years ago.
Throw in people dying outside hospitals due to wrong diagnoses or medications and the preventable death toll is around 440,000 a year. That trails only cancer and heart disease as the leading cause of death.
“Our macro problems with health care include the complexity of a patchwork system, financial incentives to do too many medical interventions and insufficient time spent on prevention. The micro problems include surgical mistakes, like operating on the wrong patient or body part, or not using proper sterile technique. Then there’s making the wrong diagnosis; using the wrong or contaminated drugs or blood; screwing up an IV; infections because staff didn’t wash their hands, and botching normal childbirths.”
“Until we get to the point where a hospital CEO is lying awake, worrying about patient safety, we won’t meaningfully move the needle…,”
* to read the full NYDN article “When health care kills” by James Warren, highlight and click on opn hyperlink http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/health-care-kills-article-1.1872544
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Jonathan M. Metsch, Dr.P.H., is Clinical Professor, Preventive Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; and Adjunct Professor, Baruch College ( C.U.N.Y.), Rutgers School of Public Health, and Rutgers School of Public Affairs and Administration
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