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How to Stop Hospitals From Killing Us
WSJ ^ | 9-22-12 | MARTY MAKARY

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 ...


TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: errors; healthcare; hospitalmistakes; hospitals; medicalmistakes; mistakes; obamacares; safety; transparency
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To: TurboZamboni

As much as humanly possible, stay the hell out of them. As obamacare ripens to full maturity, this goes double for the old people.


21 posted on 09/24/2012 6:55:20 AM PDT by sport
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To: TurboZamboni
Bad as US hospitals might be they are infinitely better than their counterparts in countries with state run socialized medicine. In the UK substandard care that would bring massive law suits in the US is common place. In Australia there was a national scandal about patients lying in their own filth in state run hospitals.
22 posted on 09/24/2012 6:57:24 AM PDT by The Great RJ
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To: GalaxyAB

good point, just did read the whole thing.

dr hodad, scary. probably an alchy


23 posted on 09/24/2012 6:59:55 AM PDT by yldstrk (My heroes have always been cowboys)
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To: bert

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................:(


24 posted on 09/24/2012 7:00:51 AM PDT by Biggirl ("Jesus talked to us as individuals"-Jim Vicevich/Thanks JimV!)
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To: yldstrk
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.

25 posted on 09/24/2012 7:09:31 AM PDT by asinclair (Curing the sickness, not adding to it.)
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To: txrefugee
I spent last week in the hospital for a lung infection. On the FIRST day, a patient service person came into my room and demanded I pay the bill right then and there, even though I have insurance. I refused to sign her papers and said send me a bill after insurance pays. I was shocked, even though I shouldn’t have been.
26 posted on 09/24/2012 7:16:43 AM PDT by Coldwater Creek (He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadows of the Almighty Psalm 91:)
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To: colorcountry

“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.


27 posted on 09/24/2012 7:23:38 AM PDT by heylady (“Sometimes I wish I could be a Democrat and then I remember I have a soul.”( Deb))
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To: sport

there could be a lot of ‘accidental’ deaths of oldsters. especially ones who are a ‘drag on society’.


28 posted on 09/24/2012 7:32:30 AM PDT by TurboZamboni (Looting the future to bribe the present)
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To: sport

This is why we got to get Romney elected come November. I fear for my country if Obama get re-elected.


29 posted on 09/24/2012 7:33:13 AM PDT by Biggirl ("Jesus talked to us as individuals"-Jim Vicevich/Thanks JimV!)
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To: Coldwater Creek

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.


30 posted on 09/24/2012 7:36:25 AM PDT by Biggirl ("Jesus talked to us as individuals"-Jim Vicevich/Thanks JimV!)
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To: yldstrk
I found out from a front page article in the New York Times that the blood I was given in 1991 was never tested for HepC. That's not “perfection,” that's minimal competency.
31 posted on 09/24/2012 7:56:19 AM PDT by Excellence (9/11 was an act of faith.)
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To: TurboZamboni

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.


32 posted on 09/24/2012 8:04:46 AM PDT by numberonepal (First they came for Sarah, then they came for Herman.....)
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To: TurboZamboni
Medical mistakes kill enough people each week to fill four jumbo jets

A pretty bold but UNSUBSTANTIATED (so far) statement. Also are they configured in 3 class service or all coach? Figures lie...liars figure.

33 posted on 09/24/2012 8:45:45 AM PDT by Don Corleone ("Oil the gun..eat the cannoli. Take it to the Mattress.")
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To: Straight Vermonter
When my wife had surgery the nurses repeatedly tried to give her the wrong medicine.

Ditto. 'Hospitals are the most dangerous place on earth.'

34 posted on 09/24/2012 8:53:09 AM PDT by who knows what evil? (G-d saved more animals than people on the ark...www.siameserescue.org.)
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To: yldstrk
I guess that's why YOU are NOT a Doc!

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.

35 posted on 09/24/2012 9:17:27 AM PDT by G Larry (Which of Obama's policies do you think I'd support if he were white?)
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To: yldstrk

When imperfect results wind up with you dead you have a pretty solid reason to demand perfection.


36 posted on 09/24/2012 9:20:15 AM PDT by discostu (Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends.)
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To: numberonepal

I wish the CDC/WHO would worry about medical errors as much as they worry about who owns a gun.


37 posted on 09/24/2012 9:40:12 AM PDT by TurboZamboni (Looting the future to bribe the present)
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To: ImNotLying
I had a friend who went to the hospital for right knee replacement surgery. Just before he went to surgery, he had his wife take a Sharpie and write on his “left” knee, “Wrong knee Doc”. And she wrote on his belly, “right knee replacement, not a vasectomy”. The doc said after the surgery that he got a good laugh out of it and said he might make this part of his routine prep.

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.

38 posted on 09/24/2012 10:08:19 AM PDT by zeugma (Rid the world of those savages. - Dorothy Woods, widow of a Navy Seal, AMEN!)
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To: Straight Vermonter

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.


39 posted on 09/24/2012 10:17:15 AM PDT by Little Ray (AGAINST Obama in the General.)
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To: G Larry

“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.


40 posted on 09/24/2012 10:23:06 AM PDT by catnipman (Cat Nipman: Vote Republican in 2012 and only be called racist one more time!)
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