Medical

By Rick Garcia

Ten years after the nation was stunned to learn that 198,000 patients die on average every year in American hospitals from preventable medical errors, hospitals are as unsafe as they ever were, according to the first major follow-up study on the issue.

The Harvard study, published in November’s New England Journal of Medicine, looked at patients in 10 North Carolina hospitals from 2002 to 2007. Researchers found that 18.6 percent of all patients were harmed by their medical care, some more than once, and 63.1 percent of the injuries were preventable. The majority of the errors were related to complications from procedures, medication mistakes and hospital acquired infections.

Although many of the injuries were minor and treatable, 2.4 percent of them caused or contributed to a patient’s death, according to the study.

Ironically, these hospitals were selected because they were known to be working hard at making safety improvements, according to study authors.  The same poor safety record is likely to be found at most U.S. hospitals, noted lead author Dr. Christopher P. Landrigan,  in a story in the New York Times. “It is unlikely that other regions of the country have fared better,” he said.

This study comes on the heels of another government report that showed 15,000 Medicare patients die every month in hospitals in the U.S. from largely preventable medical errors.  These deaths were linked to medical mistakes, substandard care and lack of patient monitoring and assessment. The report also estimated that the additional hospital care required because of these errors  costs Medicare more than $300 million per month.

The health care industry should be ashamed. It spends millions of dollars each year lobbying for reductions in the rights of Americans to sue for medical errors. Yet it obviously isn’t spending enough time or attention on preventing these errors in the first place. Americans should be outraged.

Texans, especially, should be outraged since their rights to sue for medical injury were gutted in 2003 in an effort led by hospitals, insurance companies and Gov. Rick Perry.   This so called “tort reform” promised lower health care costs for consumers. But health costs – along with medical errors — are still rampantly out of control.  A decade after the world was stunned to learn the terrible safety record of American hospitals, the only thing that’s changed is that consumers have fewer legal options should they become the victims of medical error.

By Rick Garcia

Nellie Mae Ned worked for Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas for 28 years, mainly scrubbing floors and toilets. At age 51, healthy and privately insured, she entered the hospital in 2008 for knee surgery.   What happened next is one of those stories that’s too horrible to believe and yet occurs too often to ignore.

As detailed by the Dallas Morning News, Ned is now a destitute amputee after 24 surgeries in 16 months and $1 million in unpaid bills to Medicaid.

All because of medical errors:

1)      Ned was operated on initially by an unsupervised second year surgical resident.

2)      The doctor who was credited with supervising the resident was actually vacationing in Africa

3)      Ned was not seen by a doctor on the medical staff until three days after surgery – and three days after other staff had documented her foot was swollen, purple, cold and the patient was delirious.

4)      The above was only the beginning of how she was hurt and neglected by Parkland.

The newspaper was able to piece together Ned’s story only by analyzing various documents obtained through legal means (Parkland is a publicly-funded teaching hospital) . They showed attempts by hospital staff to cover up, create confusion, and otherwise keep the facts from Ned and the public. To date, they have taken no financial responsibility.

Turns out, according to the Dallas Morning News, the hospital seriously harms about 60 patients a month.  Parkland’s  patient safety officer, Dr. Angelique Ramirez, presented a report to Parklands’   board of directors in February that analyzed patients  whose stays from October 2008 to December 2009 resulted in “prolongation of hospital stay, need for ICU care, permanent harm, or death.”  During one 90-day period, 74 percent of these occurrences were “potentially preventable,” stemming from failures of technical competence, infection prevention or care planning, the report said.

While overall patient care at Parkland is questioned by even other teaching hospitals,   the medical error rate at all hospitals continues to be unacceptable.  According to the latest Healthgrades report on this issue, released in 2008, nearly 240,000 patients died from preventable medical error in the U.S. from 2004 through 2006.

Just this month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported that more than 13 percent of Medicare patients  in U.S. hospitals each month experience an adverse event,  and some 15,000 of them die as a result. The report went on to say that “adverse events”   are often the result of medical errors, like surgical mistakes or infections, and that 44 percent of adverse incidents occurring in hospitals are avoidable. The report also estimated that these adverse events are costing Medicare more than $300 million each month.

It’s so clear that hospitals and doctors need to take responsibility for preventable medical errors   if they are ever going to get serious about dealing with them.  They need to step up, stop shifting the blame, and start cleaning up their practices. Just ask Nellie Mae Ned.