Medical Errors Cost US Lives and Billions of Dollars

On April 8, 2008, HealthGrades, a health care ratings organization has released its fifth annual Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study, covering the years 2004 through 2006. It reports that medical errors resulted in 238,337 potentially preventable deaths of U.S.
Medicare patients and cost Medicare $8.8 billion.
The study reviewed records of 41 million Medicare patients. 3 percent of the patients experienced medical errors including anesthesia complications, bed sores, failure to rescue (from respiratory failure, pulmonary embolism or deep vein thrombosis, sepsis and abdominal wounds that split open after surgery), selected infections and numerous post-operative events. This percentage represents 1.1 million medical errors over the three-year period the study examined.
Patients who experienced medical errors had a 20 percent chance of dying from them. Failure to rescue alone accounted for at least 188,000 lives lost, or 128 deaths for every 1000 patients. Bed sores, failure to rescue and post-operative respiratory failure together accounted for 63.4 percent of the errors.
The report says they "now have convincing case studies that perfection is possible when will to change and improve is present and the effort is made to implement new practices. While these examples illustrate that we have a much clearer idea of what we need to do, formidable barriers remain. Many in the industry continue to deny that truly safe care is achievable, thus the status quo continues…"
"With the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services scheduled to stop reimbursing hospitals for treatment of eight major preventable errors, including objects left in the body after surgery and certain post-surgical infections, starting Oct. 1, the financial implications for hospitals are substantial," HealthGrades said in a prepared statement.
Commentary: Two things to think about. The first is more than 238,000 deaths (217 per day) that could have been prevented and that’s only among Medicare patients. If that number were extrapolated out to the total number of hospitalized patients in the U.S. it would have to be astronomical. Also, imagine the uproar if 217 people started dying every day while riding in airplanes. How long would it take the airline industry to find the problems and correct them? Medicine needs to apply the same due diligence to disease care.
Second, it’s bad enough that doctors have been leaving objects (tools and equipment) inside of people after surgery but they’ve been billing Medicare to go back in and remove them? And Medicare paid for it? No wonder the disease care system is in a shambles.