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A study published in the prominent medical journal BMJ concluded that errors by doctors and hospitals kill more than 250,000 people a year in the US. Martin Makary, professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, led the research team and said “It boils down to people dying from the care that they receive rather than the disease for which they are seeking care.” “In recent years a lot has been made of the issue of people living without health insurance and how the government must take heroic efforts to compel everyone to obtain insurance,” Makary observed....

A Florida woman who collapsed and later died after being arrested for refusing to leave a rural hospital emergency room may have lived if medical staff and police had not assumed she was faking illness, her lawyers said on Wednesday. Barbara Dawson, 57, complained of abdominal pains at Calhoun Liberty Hospital in the Florida Panhandle town of Blountstown five days before Christmas, but medical staff examined and released her. When she refused to leave, the hospital called the police, who handcuffed her and took her outside, where she collapsed in the hospital driveway. Dawson was returned to the hospital but...

A patient undergoing a colonoscopy pressed “record” on his smartphone before being sedated, hoping to capture instructions from his physicians after the procedure. What he heard instead was shocking: “In addition to their vicious commentary, the doctors discussed avoiding the man after the colonoscopy, instructing an assistant to lie to him, and then placed a false diagnosis on his chart.” The incident cost his anesthesiologist $500,000 in the ensuing malpractice and defamation trial. The recording has to be heard to be believed.

A father took a gun into hospital to stop doctors taking his son off life support - and during the three-hour stand-off the young man squeezed his hand. The sign that he wasn't brain dead meant he was kept alive - and he is now recovering and doing well. His father, 59-year-old George Pickering II, was charged with two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after marching into Tomball Regional Medical Center in Texas with a gun. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3371236/George-Pickering-II-standoff-Tomball-Regional-Medical-Center-Houston-brain-dead-son.html#ixzz3v7lZkGrU Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Dr. Farid Fata put hundreds of people through hell in order to line his own pockets, and now federal prosecutors are seeking to put the Detroit-area oncologist away for 175 years. Fata has admitted that he misdiagnosed patients — 553 of them, according to prosecutors — and ordered chemotherapy and other unnecessary treatments for patients who didn’t even have cancer, report NBC News, which says some 9,000 needless injections or infusions were allegedly given.

“After five minutes of talking to you in pre-op,” the anesthesiologist told the sedated patient, “I wanted to punch you in the face and man you up a little bit,” she was recorded saying...When a medical assistant noted the man had a rash, the anesthesiologist warned her not to touch it, saying she might get “some syphilis on your arm or something,” then added, “It’s probably tuberculosis in the penis, so you’ll be all right.”...The anesthesiologist, Tiffany M. Ingham, 42, could not be reached for comment,...did not discourage Ingham from her comments or actions, which included writing on the man’s...

Operation Rescue has received two 911 audio recordings related to two separate abortion-related medical emergencies that took place at Preterm Clinic in Cleveland on March 20 and April 24, 2015. During both incidents, abortionist Lisa Perriera was on duty according to eyewitnesses who tell Operation Rescue she was seen at Preterm at the time of the emergencies. Perriera is known for having conducted the second-trimester dismemberment abortion that led to the death of 22-year old Lakisha Wilson last year. Preterm-03202015 The March 20, 2015, recording indicated that a medical assistant employed by Preterm placed a call to 911 at 2:57...

The American College of Physicians, combined with the American Bar Association and eight other professional organizations, has issued a call for action to stem the national crisis in firearm deaths and injuries. In a white paper published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, they point out that more than 32,000 deaths a year are the result of gun violence. The United States has the most gun deaths of any industrialized nation. In addition, the number of injuries caused by guns is more than double the death number. The Children's Safety Network estimated that in 2010, gun violence cost $174 billion....

Nationally, 724 hospitals have had their Medicare funding reduced after the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that each had high rates of potentially avoidable “hospital-acquired conditions,” including falls, bed sores, and certain infections, including ventilator acquired pneumonia and catheter-associated urinary tract infections. CMS scored hospitals on the prevalence of three risk factors to their Medicare population patients: central line bloodstream infections, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, and serious complications, a catch-all group made up of eight types of injuries, including blood clots, falls, and bed sores. Funding can be reinstated for hospitals whose scores improve in the targeted areas.

As the ACA (Obamacare) enters its comic relief phase, with the Jon Gruber videos; the “now you tell me” confessions of Democratic lawmakers who say that the bill should not have been passed; and the truly unwanted resurrection of Kathy Sebelius, maybe it’s time to get serious once again. In health care, it can’t get any more serious than physician suicide. Official estimates put the annual toll of American physicians who die at their own hand as high as 400. But, given the stigma of suicide—especially among doctors—this figure is probably low. Indeed, what are the chances that a physician,...

EXCLUSIVE: The late comedian went to Yorkville Endoscopy for a routine endoscopy on Aug. 28, but a doctor — who arrived with Rivers' entourage — offered to perform a biopsy after another doctor noticed 'something' on the entertainer's vocal chords, a medical source told the Daily News. The routine surgical procedure Joan Rivers was supposed to undergo turned deadly when a doctor who arrived at the clinic with the legendary comic’s entourage performed an unplanned biopsy on her vocal cords, a medical source who was briefed on the case told The News. Such a procedure is not supposed to be...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) $1B in malpractice settlements as horror stories revealed.The problems at Veterans Affairs extend well beyond long wait lists, with a report Tuesday showing the department is plagued with poor care that has cost up to 1,000 veterans their lives and left taxpayers on the hook for nearly $1 billion in malpractice settlements since the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of the problems detailed in the report by Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma are downright ghoulish. They include the case of a former security chief at a New York Veterans Affairs medical center whom the FBI...

An ambulance as called to the Venice Women’s Health Center in Port Charlotte, Florida, last week to transport an abortion patient to the hospital for emergency care. The patient, who was described as a Caucasian woman in her early 30′s, was removed from the abortion clinic completely covered with a blanket on June 3, 2014. Pro-life activists who witnessed the incident told Operation Rescue that one of the emergency medical technicians who responded to the abortion business’ call for emergency assistance indicated that the patient was going to be “okay.” azima“Certainly there are degrees of ‘okay’ and this doesn’t negate...

President Obama might be thrilled that 7.1 million people apparently signed up for ObamaCare exchanges. But doctors have good reason to withhold their applause. Back in June 2009, Obama told a gathering of the American Medical Association that he was "looking at a range of ideas" that would stem the tide of costly medical malpractice lawsuits and "scale back the excessive defensive medicine." A few months later, he told Congress that "I've talked to enough doctors to know that defensive medicine may be contributing to unnecessary costs" and that he would borrow a page from President Bush and fund demonstration...

In an address to the House on Wednesday, Alabama Representative Mo Brooks read aloud a letter sent to him by Dr. Marlin Gill of Decatur. The letter holds nothing back while detailing the excessive costs and regulations that Dr. Gill calls Obamacare’s “war against doctors.” Here is the full text of the letter, courtesy of Rep. Brooks’ office: Dear Congressman Brooks, As a practicing family physician, I plead for help against what I can best characterize as Washington’s war against doctors. The medical profession has never before remotely approached today’s stress, work hours, wasted costs, decreased efficiency, and declining ability...

The cost of defensive medicine, those tests and procedures ordered solely to protect hospitals and physicians from medical malpractice (Med-Mal) litigation, are estimated to cost as much as $200 billion each year. That’s more than seven percent of all the money spent on health care annually. A number of Republicans tried—to no avail—to include some aspect of tort reform in the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). So did Bart Gordon (D-TN), a Blue Dog Democrat, and he also failed. In the summer of 2009, Howard Dean, a physician, onetime presidential candidate, and former chair of the Democratic National Committee, was asked...

BALDWIN PARK (CBSLA.com) — A family who sued Kaiser Permanente Medical Center after the death of their 10-year-old daughter is outraged over a law that limits the payout in a malpractice suit. Dekel Zelig said his wife took their daughter, Daniela, to Kaiser in Baldwin Park after the youngster wasn’t feeling well in March 2012. “She was vomiting, she was nauseous, she had a fever, she didn’t feel good,” Zelig said. The father said the doctor sent Daniela home without monitoring her blood pressure or taking an X-ray. He said the doctor checked his daughter’s lungs with a stethoscope on...

The GOP was accused of overreaching on the IRS; the Left won’t drop the traffic scandal. Some observers were quick to compare New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s “Bridgegate” scandal to the inappropriate targeting of conservative activist group by the Obama administration’s Internal Revenue Service. Both involve the abuse of power to punish political opponents, and stunned, angry, saddened executives who blamed their underlings. However, the media’s reactions to the two scandals have been quite different. The New York Times, for example, ran a “Room for Debate” forum asking contributors to debate whether or not Christie should resign as a result...

After a protracted legal battle, Children’s Hospital Oakland reached an agreement with Jahi Mcmath’s family to allow a medical team to enter the hospital to perform the procedures necessary to move her to a medical facility that will continue her care and treatment. Her mother and family say she is alive following a tonsillectomy gone awry that has left her in an incapacitated state since early December. The family in the case says the hospital has been starving Jahi for three weeks. The San Francisco Chronicle has more details: The agreement, described in the courtroom of Alameda County Superior Court...

As the year ends, I see that others have already conscientiously compiled lists of the most underreported and misreported [2] stories of the year, with some even breaking matters down between foreign [3] and domestic [4].With that task addressed, I thought it would be worthwhile to compile a far from comprehensive list of ten of the more noteworthy techniques which those who pretend to be loyal to the tenets of journalism employed during 2013 to deceive, misinform, misdirect and smear.1. Pretend that “no one” is saying something, when they really are.Carol Costello of CNN claimed in January [5] that “no...