By Ralph R. Reiland on 8.11.04 @ 12:05AM
A bigger killer of Americans than World War II.
A 1999 study by the Institute of Medicine, "To Err Is Human,"
said that 98,000 Americans are killed per year by in-hospital
medical errors. Now, according to a new study from Colorado-based
Healthgrades Inc., a company that specializes in tracking patient
outcomes and giving awards to hospitals that they assess as
performing the best, the Institute of Medicine's estimate of
preventable in-hospital deaths was wrong by half.
Researching data on nearly half of all hospital admissions from
2000 through 2002 in all 50 states and the District of Columbia,
Healthgrades puts the number of annual deaths from medication
errors and other in-hospital mistakes at 195,000. That's more than
three Vietnams every year, more than triple the total number of
Americans killed in Vietnam in over a decade of war.
The Healthgrades report, "Patient Safety in American Hospitals,"
includes the deaths of low-risk patients from infections as well as
the mistakes made in attempts to rescue dying patients, things that
were missing from the Institute of Medicine report. "If the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention's annual list of leading causes
of death included medical errors," says Dr. Samantha Collier, vice
president of medical affairs at Healthgrades, "it would show up as
number six, ahead of deaths from diabetes, pneumonia, Alzheimer's
disease and renal disease."
Worse, the 195,000 may be too low. "We're relying on data that
hospitals submit," explains Collier, "and that might be a reason to
under-document" the actual number of mistakes and resulting
in-hospital deaths. "And we were only looking at in-hospital
errors," says Collier, suggesting that medical errors made in
outpatient settings would take the death toll to even higher
levels. Imagine what we'd do as a nation if a U.S. passenger jet
was crashing every day, or if a gang of jihadist shoe-bombers was
successful in bringing down a fully-loaded U.S. passenger plane
every day. The 195,000 figure, explains Collier, is "the equivalent
of 390 jumbo jets full of people dying each year due to likely
preventable, in-hospital medical errors, making this one of the
leading killers in the U.S."
In total, the United States had 292,000 combat deaths in all of
World War II. In America's hospitals, according to the Healthgrades
report, we're losing that many people to medical errors every 18
months. In the face of this massive death toll, the Bush
administration is seeking to put a $250,000 cap on recoveries for
non-economic damages due to medical errors, place time restraints
on a patient's right to sue, limit the level of punitive damages,
and block lawsuits filed by patients seeking compensation from
manufacturers for harm caused by medical devices or drugs.
On the point of preventing people from suing the manufacturers
of defective medical products, the administration is arguing that
patients lose the right to sue once a product has been approved by
the Food and Drug Administration. " The FDA is not infallible,"
countered the New York Times in a recent editorial. " It
seems poor policy to assume that once the agency has judged a
product safe enough to use, the manufacturer should be insulated
forever from lawsuits that could force improvements. Simple justice
suggests that victims harmed by a product should be able to seek
compensation."
Referring to "a culture of lawsuits in America, a litigation
culture," President Bush stated in a speech earlier this year to a
group of health care professionals in Little Rock that the American
health care system "looks like a giant lottery," and "somehow, the
trial lawyers always hold the winning ticket." In fact, what looks
more like a lottery is taking a chance on a hospital and hoping to
come out alive.
"Lawsuits don't heal patients -- that's a fact," said Mr. Bush
in his Little Rock address. "We can have balance in our society
when it comes to a good legal system and a good medical system.
It's not that way today. The pendulum has swung way, way too far."
Looking at the numbers, one has to wonder if the pendulum has swung
far enough. Most studies show that only a very small percentage of
negligently injured patients ever file a lawsuit. And with the
equivalent of a World War II in America's hospitals every 18
months, one also has to ask why Mr. Bush is saying that the way to
reduce bad performance is through a reduction in the penalties for
bad performance.
topics:
Health Care, Law
