Hospital mistakes killing patients (44,000 to 98,000 people die annually)

The Knox News Sentinel ^ | 5/19/03 | Charles Ornstein

[TaxRelief]

Why is the LAT rehashing a study based on data from almost 20 years ago?

If the FR motto of "follow the money" is applied, who in the LAT sphere-of-influence benefits from this publication?

[Beck_isright]

You're on the money. But the stay at home moms are rarely selected because they are usually too conservative for liberal lawyers and judges. We who are self-employed avoid jury duty because while many who sit there get compensated by their employers, we don't get a week's pay unless we are out there earning it.
You have hit a home run though. The jury system is broken.

[MalcolmS]

Number of physicians in the US - 700,000 Accidental deaths caused per year - 120,000 Accidental deaths/physician = 0.171

How many people does the average Doctor see in a year?

At current HMO requirements, I would guess one every ten minutes, fifty hours per week, for a total of 15,600 per year. Not including the fact that many of these cases are terminal no matter what, that working conditions and resources are restricted, that works out to an error rate of 1 in 91,228. Another way of looking at the number is that the average doctor goes 1/.171 = 5.84 years on average before making a fatal mistake.

Personally, I think I'm doing well if I go 5.84 years in my job without making a mistake! Be glad doctors aren't journalists, who can't seem to go 5.84 column inches without making a fatal mistake. We can't hold medical professionals to a standard that is impossible to keep, punishing them financially when they cannot achieve the impossible. I personally think this type of error rate is fantastic in such a very human, often confusing field.

I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV, but I'm glad those who are doctors are persisting in the face of this nonsense. I would have given up long ago. It's already virtually impossible to get an OB in Florida, as insurance rates are $250,000 per year.

The looters and lawyers are at the hospital gates. Paging Dr. Galt, Dr. Jonathon Galt.

[Beck_isright]

The problem is not the "good" doctors. The problem is that 4-5% which have created this nightmare are not losing their right to practice. Same for lawyers. Get rid of the problems instead of spreading the financial risks to all doctors and lawyers.

[TaxRelief]

Even good doctors get sued, though. One of our active county Republican Party members has had his malpractice insurance discontinued because his insurance company has spent $340,000 defending him in 2 lawsuits, that he won, in the last 5 years. The insurance company said they were paying out too much to defend him.

[Beck_isright]

Yes, but not to defend the insurance companies (no way), if the bad doctors would lose their practice, things would improve. Of course we need bad lawyers to lose their practice also.

[TaxRelief]

Corporate employees at management level and up (the achievers) also avoid jury duty like the plague. I am also suspicious that initial jury selection is made primarily from the democrat registrations rather the whole pool. How would one go about researching this?

[Beck_isright]

I've got no idea. If you have an attorney on retainer, I'm sure he can spit out the stats to you. When I see mine again next month, I'll try to remember to ask him.

[TaxRelief]

So, you think we should build a mistake allowance into the equation? Say, if a doctor makes a catastrophic mistake, but it has been 5.84 years since he made any mistakes, then the lawsuit should be dismissed?

[Consort]

Follow the body parts.

[Polybius]

The bottom line is that the public has allowed these two self-regulating professions to spiral out of control. Tort-reform cures nothing. The real reform needs to come on a state by state level, with citizen run regulatory boards having an equal say with the professional groups.

"Self-regulating professions"?

Only a State can issue a medical license. Only a State has the legal authority to lay down the requirements for issuing a medical license. Only a State has the legal authority to revoke a medical license.

I am not clear why you describe doctors as a "self-regulating profession".

To claim that a State regulatory board somehow has less than an "equal say" with a doctor's "professional group" is as false as claiming that the American Automobile Association has equal say with the Department of Drivers Licensing in your State.

As Chairman of my hospital's Credentials Committee, the only authority my committee has is to decide whether or not a physician will be allowed to practice medicine in our hospital.

Beyond that, the "bad" physician can set up practice at his own clinic or Surgi-Center and perform brain surgery with plastic forks taken out of the trash bin of a McDonald's restaurant if he so pleases and the only legal thing I can do to stop him is to bring the matter to the attention of the legal authorities of the State of Washington. If the State of Washington decides that brain surgery with ketchup-coated plastic knives is O.K. by them, there is absolutely nothing that I or any other M.D. in the State of Washington can do to revoke that individual's medical license.

If you disagree, could you please cite a single ruling by a State Medical Licensing Board in any State in the Union that has ever been overturned by a medical professional organization.

Can you cite a single medical license that has ever been issued by a medical "professional group"?

[Polybius]

Personally, I think I'm doing well if I go 5.84 years in my job without making a mistake! Be glad doctors aren't journalists, who can't seem to go 5.84 column inches without making a fatal mistake. We can't hold medical professionals to a standard that is impossible to keep, punishing them financially when they cannot achieve the impossible.

Sure you can. It was done in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Yeah, sure, the doctors packed up and moved out of Nevada, Las Vega's trauma hospitals are out of business and a woman in Las Vegas doeas have to drive to Utah to find an obstetrician to deliver her baby but the fact remains that you can do that! < /sarcasm>

[webstersII]

"People go to hospitals because they are in desperate need of medical attention"

Not true. Many cases are of people who go in for elective surgery or a relatively minor condition. But people don't understand the dangers inherent in hospitals so they don't think of any negative consequences to it.

The other item that the article didn't really highlight is that, according to a study reported in the JAMA, many of the people who die will die from severe reactions to prescription drugs. Apparently sometimes they don't monitor the patient's condition very closely to look for reactions until it's too late.

[MalcolmS]

So, you think we should build a mistake allowance into the equation? Say, if a doctor makes a catastrophic mistake, but it has been 5.84 years since he made any mistakes, then the lawsuit should be dismissed?

No, I'm saying that doctors are fallible human beings and we have to live with unintended consequences of requiring them to be perfect. There is a legal doctrine for this, it's a standard of reasonableness, which is being lost.

i.e.

1) If a state decides that it is going to have doctors pay out millions in the event of a death or disability, that could have, in 20/20 hindsight, been prevented, then it should not be surprised when no one wants to practice medicine there, particularly in high-risk fields.

2) If the legal or medical system tries to reduce risk by creating so many safeguards and backups and high-tech tests to reduce the effective risk to zero, the cost will rise so high that even routine care will become unaffordable.

The net end effect is that no medical care is accessible. Doctors shrug--read Atlas Shrugged. It describes the situation perfectly. Hospitals are required by law to provide costly care to people who cannot pay, at the behest of a goverment who will not cover their costs. The patients will then sue if the outcome is poor. As a result, those who can pay are charged $200 for a Tylenol tablet. But they don't notice because their insurance companies pay on their behalf. They don't notice until their employer moves to Mexico or China because health premiums are approaching 30-50% or salary costs. It's all based on a something-for-nothing looter mentality.

This does not mean that the truly incompetent, the reckless and untalented should not be rooted out and dismissed, they must be. And Doctor's associations have often not all they could to police their own.

We have to accept that we don't, and never will, live in a perfect world.

We should not hold doctors to an unreasonable standard of performance, one that the rest of the working world is not willing, or even able to live up to.

[Jay D. Dyson]

It's kinda old news, really. Pro-2A folks have been having a field day with this news for some time, as evidenced by this page. ;)

-Jay