It is either working, or the ad men who sell this kind of crap are convincing, but time and time again organizations representing doctors and hospitals blame "unfounded" lawsuits for the high cost of insurance and for their miserable failing grades. Well, I for one don't think the public is that dumb, so here's the truth.
In 2010, the Office of Inspector General for Health and Human Services said that bad hospital care contributed to the deaths of 180,000 patients in Medicare alone in a given year.
Now comes a study in the current issue of the Journal of Patient Safety that says the numbers may be much higher 2014 between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year who go to the hospital for care suffer some type of preventable harm that contributes to their death, the study says.
That would make medical errors the third-leading cause of death in America, behind heart disease, which is the first, and cancer, which is second. [Scientific American]
And so how does Kentucky rank when it comes to Emergency Room care?
Kentucky's emergency rooms rank among the worst in the nation, but health officials say it's policy, not patient care, that accounts for the low score.
"The report isn't a judgment on the quality of care," said Dr. Ryan Stanton, a member of the American College of Emergency Physicians, which released a state-by-state report card this month.
Kentucky ranked 47th, dropping from 44th when the last report was issued in 2009. The reports covered not only quality of care but access to care, public health, disaster preparedness and medical liability.
The fear of an unfounded lawsuit can keep emergency room doctors from coming to Kentucky to practice, he said. [Herald Leader]
Now let's get this straight, fear of unfounded lawsuits is keeping better doctors from coming to Kentucky? Isn't that just a kinder way of saying we have lesser qualified doctors here? And in that light we are still being asked to swallow the argument that the problem isn't with less qualified doctors it's with lawsuits over the harm they cause? Give me a break.
Look, I can't stand frivolous lawsuits, they harm us all. They make it harder for juries to believe the meritorious ones, they usually are built around some publicity seeking lawyer which harms the image of our profession and they tie up court dockets denying the timely delivery of justice to the truly injured.
But to suggest that when medical negligence is the third leading cause of death in America and Kentucky emergency rooms rate 47th out of 50 that the problem is with "unfounded lawsuits" is an insult to your intelligence.
No lawyer worth his or her salt will file a lawsuit against a doctor until he/she has submitted all of the records to a competent, qualified and recognized expert for an opinion as to causation and damages. And then, in most cases, no suit is filed unless the medical negligence is clear and the damages worth the expensive fight.
In reality, the refusal of the medical profession to demand higher quality performance and their lax approach to policing their own profession is far more to blame.
Recently I tried a case against an emergency room doctor who admitted he was a drug addict and an alcoholic. He had been sent to rehab by the Kentucky medical board but permitted to practice. He fell off the wagon, was sent to an inpatient treatment and then allowed back in the ER. So he's no risk to the public?
More and more people are treating ER's as their primary care centers so I can understand why some providers get a little bored treating the sniffles rather than real trauma, but poor care and avoidable injuries are a reality in hospitals.
But why improve care when making mistakes can also mean making a huge profit?
Johns Hopkins researchers report that hospitals may be reaping enormous income for patients whose hospital stays are complicated by preventable bloodstream infections contracted in their intensive care units.
In a small, new study, reported online in the American Journal of Medical Quality, the researchers found that an ICU patient who develops an avoidable central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) costs nearly three times more to care for than a similar infection-free patient. Moreover, hospitals earn nearly nine times more for treating infected patients, who spend an average of 24 days in the hospital.
The researchers also found that private insurers, rather than Medicare and Medicaid, pay the most for patient stays complicated by CLABSIs — roughly $400,000 per hospital stay — suggesting that private insurers would gain the most financial benefit from working with hospitals to reduce infection rates.
“We have known that hospitals often profit from complications, even ones of their own making,” says Peter J. Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D., senior vice president for patient safety for Johns Hopkins Medicine and one of the authors of the research. “What we did not know was by how much, and that private insurers are largely footing the bill.” [Johns Hopkins]
Sure the medical profession has a well funded lobby and sure we all need our doctors and have a wonderful system of health care services available in the United States, and yes I am fully in support of the good doctors who are working daily to treat patients with loving care, the best in modern science and who take their duties seriously.
But failing grades, obscene death statistics and profiting off of mistakes are now matters of record, and as such are matters of fact.
Blaming lawsuits by injured patients as the cause of these disasters is a gross insult and an abuse of the public trust.
Here's a little advice to the medical profession and in particular the hospitals that might be a better cure for what ails them than blaming others:
Physicians, heal thy-selves.
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