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Johns Hopkins study suggests medical errors are third-leading cause of death in U.S. https://hub.jhu.edu/2016/05/03/medical-errors-third-leading-cause-of-death

Johns Hopkins study suggests medical errors are third-leading cause of death in U.S. https://hub.jhu.edu/2016/05/03/medical-errors-third-leading-cause-of-death/ https://hub.jhu.edu/2016/05/03/medical-errors-third-leading-...

kreco 9y ago
Really interesting, thx !
mobilefriendly 9y ago
I was on a multi-corporate task force on medical errors in the late 1990s and the working number was about 80,000 deaths per year. I remember GM saying that statistically it worked out to something like one GM worker or retiree like every week, and that if they had that kind of mayhem on the assembly line there'd be outrage... but the inept health care system just quietly kills people.
ams6110 9y ago
And yet we're all wound up about so-called assault weapons and the NRA. Not meaning to take this on a political tangent, just using that as a current-events example of things we worry about and spend political capital on, that have really very little statistical impact. Compare the much, much larger number of deaths due to medical error, automobile accidents, etc.
skadamou 9y ago
I thought this excerpt from the article you posted was interesting "The researchers caution that most medical errors aren't due to inherently bad doctors, and that reporting these errors shouldn't be addressed by punishment or legal action. Rather, they say, most errors represent systemic problems, including poorly coordinated care, fragmented insurance networks, the absence or underuse of safety nets, and other protocols, in addition to unwarranted variation in physician practice patterns that lack accountability." I've seen this statistic before and had not looked into in much but it sounds like determining if docs cause more harm than good is perhaps a little more nuanced than the statistic first seems. On a related note, below I've linked to an NPR article about how women that gave birth under the care of a doctor in the 1800s were 5 times more likely to die than those seen by a midwife because doctors were not washing there hands or medical interments. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/12/375663920/the-doctor-who-championed-hand-washing-and-saved-women-s-lives https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/12/3756639...
jandrese 9y ago
I used to think that was an inflated figure and that they didn't account for the fact that the people in the hospital were sick already and attributing their death to a missed pill is a bit like saying it was the straw that broke the camel's back. Then I used our local hospital a couple of times and I'm not so sure. I had thought you would need to be a conscientious person to be a nurse, but apparently it is not the case. It doesn't help that the hospital has this IT system that is no doubt fully HIPPA compliant, but absurdly restrictive in actual use. Nurses couldn't get notes from the previous nurse because of permissions issues pretty much every time. They wouldn't even know the notes were there unless we reminded them, there was no indication that they were not seeing the full picture.

kreco 9y ago

Really interesting, thx !

mobilefriendly 9y ago

I was on a multi-corporate task force on medical errors in the late 1990s and the working number was about 80,000 deaths per year. I remember GM saying that statistically it worked out to something like one GM worker or retiree like every week, and that if they had that kind of mayhem on the assembly line there'd be outrage... but the inept health care system just quietly kills people.

ams6110 9y ago

And yet we're all wound up about so-called assault weapons and the NRA. Not meaning to take this on a political tangent, just using that as a current-events example of things we worry about and spend political capital on, that have really very little statistical impact. Compare the much, much larger number of deaths due to medical error, automobile accidents, etc.

skadamou 9y ago

I thought this excerpt from the article you posted was interesting "The researchers caution that most medical errors aren't due to inherently bad doctors, and that reporting these errors shouldn't be addressed by punishment or legal action. Rather, they say, most errors represent systemic problems, including poorly coordinated care, fragmented insurance networks, the absence or underuse of safety nets, and other protocols, in addition to unwarranted variation in physician practice patterns that lack accountability." I've seen this statistic before and had not looked into in much but it sounds like determining if docs cause more harm than good is perhaps a little more nuanced than the statistic first seems. On a related note, below I've linked to an NPR article about how women that gave birth under the care of a doctor in the 1800s were 5 times more likely to die than those seen by a midwife because doctors were not washing there hands or medical interments. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/12/375663920/the-doctor-who-championed-hand-washing-and-saved-women-s-lives https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/12/3756639...

jandrese 9y ago

I used to think that was an inflated figure and that they didn't account for the fact that the people in the hospital were sick already and attributing their death to a missed pill is a bit like saying it was the straw that broke the camel's back. Then I used our local hospital a couple of times and I'm not so sure. I had thought you would need to be a conscientious person to be a nurse, but apparently it is not the case. It doesn't help that the hospital has this IT system that is no doubt fully HIPPA compliant, but absurdly restrictive in actual use. Nurses couldn't get notes from the previous nurse because of permissions issues pretty much every time. They wouldn't even know the notes were there unless we reminded them, there was no indication that they were not seeing the full picture.