If
you survive
What made you ill,
Mistakes by docs
Can get you still.
What made you ill,
Mistakes by docs
Can get you still.
Estimates vary, but every year an average of 195,000 Americans die from medical errors. These acts aren't done on purpose — they are screw-ups, often dealing with medication. Other hundreds of thousands are annually injured. Surely, you say,
Wrong.
The last thing hospitals, doctors, insurers, and pharmaceutical companies want
is to get this mess sorted out. That would mean inadequate doctors would lose
their licenses, inattentive hospitals would get bad publicity, and insurers and
Big Pharma would have to shell out some big bucks.
To protect against such
calamities, the medical industry has worked out an impenetrable defense. State
licensing boards rarely discipline anyone, and they make it painfully difficult
either to find out what actions they have taken or to file a complaint.
Insurers, in their fine print, don't let victims sue, only arbitrate, in
kangaroo settings. Doctors won't testify against one another. And in perhaps
the cutest wrinkle of all, hospitals, which autopsied around half their deaths 50 years ago, now only do 5 percent.
Thus medical mistakes do indeed get quietly buried.
Other
research, published in Health
Affairs, found thatone in three hospital admissions results in a medical
mistake. The growing use of electronic medical records should
blessedly cut into this avalanche of foggy paper data that today receives
discreet burial in office filing cabinets. More prying eyes should soon get to
see the electronic variety.
Otherwise,
prospects for improvement are dim. Healthcare in this country is, after all,
largely a business venture. Corporate ownership of hospitals is spreading and
non-profit hospitals each day act more and more like corporations.
Doctors are
mostly entrepreneurs with payrolls to meet and rent to pay. Savvy groups of
them invest in specialized clinics, fueling our nation's chronic over testing.
Big drugmakers offer incentives to doctors to prescribe their own patented
brands. And perhaps most importantly, the bigger players retain fleets of
lobbyists to make sure that no rogue legislature cracks down seriously on all
this waste and error.
There's
also the reality that in our society doctors are hallowed figures. After all,
they had to pass organic chemistry. Further, while the vast majority is just
out to help people, they do remain human.
They make mistakes, and some suffer
from avarice. All seek to avoid embarrassment.
They fear lawsuits. In other
words, in addition to America
Privilege rules and the patient is at the
mercy of powerful players who operate with impunity.
OtherWords columnist William A. Collins is a
former state representative, and a former mayor of Norwalk , Connecticut