From: judgebean23x@gmail.com   
      
   Medical errors now third leading cause of death in United States   
      
      
   The Washington Post    
        
   Researchers: Medical errors now third leading cause of death in United States    
      
   By Ariana Eunjung Cha To Your Health    
   May 3    
      
   A new study by patient safety researchers shows common medical errors may be   
   the third leading cause of death in the U.S., after heart disease and cancer.   
   (Deirdra O'Regan/The Washington Post)    
   Nightmare stories of nurses giving potent drugs meant for one patient to   
   another and surgeons removing the wrong body parts have dominated recent   
   headlines about medical care. Lest you assume those cases are the exceptions,   
   a new study by patient-safety    
   researchers provides some context.    
      
   Their analysis, published in the BMJ on Tuesday, shows that “medical   
   errors” in hospitals and other health-care facilities are incredibly common   
   and may now be the third-leading cause of death in the United States —   
   claiming 251,000 lives every    
   year, more than respiratory disease, accidents, stroke and Alzheimer’s.    
      
   Martin Makary, a professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School   
   of Medicine who led the research, said in an interview that the category   
   includes everything from bad doctors to more systemic issues such as   
   communication breakdowns when    
   patients are handed off from one department to another.    
      
   “It boils down to people dying from the care that they receive rather than   
   the disease for which they are seeking care,” Makary said.    
      
      
   ['Looming catastrophe': These 7 emergency surgeries account for 80 percent of   
   deaths and costs]    
      
   The issue of patient safety has been a hot topic in recent years, but it   
   wasn’t always that way. In 1999, an Institute of Medicine report calling   
   preventable medical errors an “epidemic” shocked the medical establishment   
   and led to significant    
   debate about what could be done.    
      
   The IOM, based on one study, estimated deaths because of medical errors as   
   high as 98,000 a year.  Makary’s research involves a more comprehensive   
   analysis of four large studies, including ones by the Health and Human   
   Services Department’s Office of    
   the Inspector General and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality that   
   took place between 2000 to 2008. His calculation of 251,000 deaths equates to   
   nearly 700 deaths a day — about 9.5 percent of all deaths annually in the   
   United States.    
      
        
   Makary said he and co-author Michael Daniel, also from Johns Hopkins,   
   conducted the analysis to shed more light on a problem that many hospitals and   
   health-care facilities try to avoid talking about.    
      
      
   Although all providers extol patient safety and highlight the various safety   
   committees and protocols they have in place, few provide the public with   
   specifics on actual cases of harm due to mistakes. Moreover, the Centers for   
   Disease Control and    
   Prevention doesn’t require reporting of errors in the data it collects about   
   deaths through billing codes, making it hard to see what’s going on at the   
   national level.    
      
   [Does your surgeon have enough practice to operate on you?]    
      
   The CDC should update its vital statistics reporting requirements so that   
   physicians must report whether there was any error that led to a preventable   
   death, Makary said.    
      
   “We all know how common it is,” he said. “We also know how infrequently   
   it’s openly discussed.”    
      
   Kenneth Sands, who directs health-care quality at Beth Israel Deaconess   
   Medical Center, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, said that the   
   surprising thing about medical errors is the limited change that has taken   
   place since the IOM report came out.    
   Only hospital-acquired infections have shown improvement. “The overall   
   numbers haven’t changed, and that’s discouraging and alarming,” he said.    
      
   [A doctor removed the wrong ovary, and other nightmare tales from California   
   licensing records]    
      
   Sands, who was not involved in the study published in the BMJ, formerly known   
   as the British Medical Journal, said that one of the main barriers is the   
   tremendous diversity and complexity in the way health care is delivered.    
      
    May 2016cover    
   Consumer Reports recently investigated California licensing records and found   
   that many doctors who were still practicing were on probation for serious   
   violations of patient safety.    
   “There has just been a higher degree of tolerance for variability in   
   practice than you would see in other industries,” he explained. When   
   passengers get on a plane, there’s a standard way attendants move around,   
   talk to them and prepare them for    
   flight, Sands said, yet such standardization isn’t seen at hospitals. That   
   makes it tricky to figure out where errors are occurring and how to fix them.   
   The government should work with institutions to try to find ways improve on   
   this situation, he said.   
       
      
   Makary also used an airplane analogy in describing how he thinks hospitals   
   should approach errors, referencing what the Federal Aviation Administration   
   does in its accident investigations.    
      
      
   “Measuring the problem is the absolute first step,” he said. “Hospitals   
   are currently investigating deaths where medical error could have been a   
   cause, but they are underresourced. What we need to do is study patterns   
   nationally.”    
      
   [At top U.S. hospital, almost 50 percent of surgeries have drug-related   
   errors]    
      
   He said that in the aviation community every pilot in the world learns from   
   investigations and that the results are disseminated widely.    
      
   “When a plane crashes, we don’t say this is confidential proprietary   
   information the airline company owns. We consider this part of public safety.   
   Hospitals should be held to the same standards,” Makary said.    
      
   Frederick van Pelt,  a doctor who works for the Chartis Group, a health-care   
   consultancy, said another element of harm that is often overlooked is the   
   number of severe patient injuries resulting from medical error.    
      
   “Some estimates would put this number at 40 times the death rate,” van   
   Pelt said. “Again, this gets buried in the daily exposure that care   
   providers have around patients who are suffering or in pain that is to be   
   expected following procedures.”    
        
      
   https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/05/03   
   researchers-medical-errors-now-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-united-states/   
      
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