Posted on 05/11/2016 9:34:36 AM PDT by fella
Analyzing medical death rate data over an eight-year period, Johns Hopkins patient safety experts have calculated that more than 250,000 deaths per year are due to medical error in the U.S. Their figure, published May 3 in The BMJ, surpasses the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) third leading cause of death -- respiratory disease, which kills close to 150,000 people per year.
The Johns Hopkins team says the CDC's way of collecting national health statistics fails to classify medical errors separately on the death certificate. The researchers are advocating for updated criteria for classifying deaths on death certificates.
"Incidence rates for deaths directly attributable to medical care gone awry haven't been recognized in any standardized method for collecting national statistics," says Martin Makary, M.D., M.P.H., professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and an authority on health reform. "The medical coding system was designed to maximize billing for physician services, not to collect national health statistics, as it is currently being used."
In 1949, Makary says, the U.S. adopted an international form that used International Classification of Diseases (ICD) billing codes to tally causes of death.
"At that time, it was under-recognized that diagnostic errors, medical mistakes and the absence of safety nets could result in someone's death, and because of that, medical errors were unintentionally excluded from national health statistics," says Makary.
The researchers say that since that time, national mortality statistics have been tabulated using billing codes, which don't have a built-in way to recognize incidence rates of mortality due to medical care gone wrong.
In their study, the researchers examined four separate studies that analyzed medical death rate data from 2000 to 2008, including one by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the Inspector General and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Then, using hospital admission rates from 2013, they extrapolated that based on a total of 35,416,020 hospitalizations, 251,454 deaths stemmed from a medical error, which the researchers say now translates to 9.5 percent of all deaths each year in the U.S.
According to the CDC, in 2013, 611,105 people died of heart disease, 584,881 died of cancer and 149,205 died of chronic respiratory disease -- the top three causes of death in the U.S. The newly calculated figure for medical errors puts this cause of death behind cancer but ahead of respiratory disease.
"Top-ranked causes of death as reported by the CDC inform our country's research funding and public health priorities," says Makary. "Right now, cancer and heart disease get a ton of attention, but since medical errors don't appear on the list, the problem doesn't get the funding and attention it deserves."
The researchers caution that most of medical errors aren't due to inherently bad doctors, and that reporting these errors shouldn't be addressed by punishment or legal action. Rather, they say, most errors represent systemic problems, including poorly coordinated care, fragmented insurance networks, the absence or underuse of safety nets, and other protocols, in addition to unwarranted variation in physician practice patterns that lack accountability.
"Unwarranted variation is endemic in health care. Developing consensus protocols that streamline the delivery of medicine and reduce variability can improve quality and lower costs in health care. More research on preventing medical errors from occurring is needed to address the problem," says Makary.
Michael Daniel of Johns Hopkins is a co-author on the study.
What do you call the graduate from Medical School
with the lowest Grade Point Average?
Doctor
Two words: (1) affirmative (2) action
In the last year my two oldest and best friends have been carried away, one by medical malfeasance and the other by misfeasance.
This is the same sort of problem as “friendly fire” incidents in the military. If a weapon is not dangerous to your enemy, you do not use it. But if it is dangerous to your enemy, you do use it - even if (say rather, even though) it endangers “friendlies” to some lesser degree.What we have seen in recent wars has been such a preponderance of effective force on our part that our casualties were negligible compared to those of our opponents. In such case, it is logical to ramp up our use of our forces to the point where our casualties from the enemy are matched by our casualties from friendly fire. If you back off on your use of force from that point, you will allow hostile fire casualties to rise faster than your friendly fire casualties are decreased.
That is the 80,000 ft. view of the situation. Details seen from closer in will sometimes, even usually, justify second guessing in particular cases.
In the medical field, the application of that logic is that you go to the doctor even though he might kill you, if your chances with the doctor are better than your chances without him.
Uh..NO!
4th.
ABORTION KILLS over 1 MILLION per year.
Abortions aren’t medical error, they are just straight out murder.
I smell something - wait - wait - yes, it's a new government program that needs funding, lol.
This is fake!
Addiction to prescription painkillers is suspected. The DEA and other federales are tracking down suspects. We will all be in suspense until the issue is put to rest, which could take weeks or months.
Such a high-profile investigation is more called for after the sudden death of a Supreme Court justice, one would think.
Is there another possible reason, do you think?
Will we one day--not soon, let's hope, as we all would like to reach our "golden years" in some degree of good health--be forced to suffer the agony of diarrhea because the nanny state forbids us the use of currently-available remedies?
Nurses who want to work in hospitals should spend most of their education time in a HOSPITAL. You can’t learn the stuff you gotta on a college campus. Fact. Those who are interested in working for insurance companies or other areas should work on the campus.
Sounds like going to the hospital is as dangerous as smoking.
Good thing they’re “smoke free zones”, otherwise you’d probably drop dead just trying to get from the parking lot to the door.
Of these medical errors, the vast majority are medication errors, and most of those are in the Rx order-entry process by the physician.
Keep in mind with reduced reimbursement rates to physicians, they must hurry each visit to see enough patients just to keep their doors open. And of course obamacare has made it worse.
Poorly coordinated care is a medical error? Fragmented insurance networks is a medical error? absence of safety nets- what the heck does that mean?
As a nurse, I have seen ( and have done) minor med errors. We all do. Usually because we have to multitask due to heavy patient load. I have never seen in my career a medical error that killed someone. if medical errors was the third cause of death, you would see an epidemic of errors in the hospital.
What I think is happening here is that they are counting complications ( for example: a very sick patient in the ICU getting septic and dying due to an indwelling foley catheter). People who are sick sometimes die. Expecting a perfect outcome with no complications is unrealistic.
I would really like to know what this study counts as a medical error.
If you’ll go to the link you’ll see that they source AAA.
But I do understand “George Jetson Syndrome”. With GJS if you push 3 buttons in a work shift your completely wore out.
Medical Errors are 4th.
Abortion is 1st.
Which reminds of that old joke...What do you call the guy who finished at the bottom of his class in med school? Answer: Doctor.
source AAA?
Just more proof.
Exactly. There are a lot of very broad, undefined terms in this ‘research’.
Is it an error if an antibiotic is prescribed which normally works and the infecting organism is resistant? Is it an error if a medication interaction is caused because a patient doesn’t tell one physician about medications from another or takes them improperly? Is it an error if a new medication causes an allergic reaction? Is it an error if a physician chooses one common form of treatment over another and it doesn’t work? Is it an error if a patient fails to return for secondary testing, so a condition goes undiagnosed?
The ‘safety nets’ inclusion in this article makes me highly suspicious. Are they counting people who return with chronic conditions as errors of treatment if they run out of medications or don’t go to follow-up appointments?
Just my 2 cents,
Love,
O2
This deliberate or just an “accident”?
Beware obamacare!
I am as highly suspect of this study as the one years ago that said 98,000 deaths per year from medical mistakes.
You gave excellent examples to suggest how they perhaps shape and present the data.
I’ll look at it closer this weekend maybe.
Forgot to mention the money quote.
...”the problem doesn’t get the FUNDING and attention it deserves.”
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