When the Institute of Medicine published its landmark 1999 study “To Err Is Human,” finding that up to 98,000 patients die each year in hospitals due to medical errors, the medical industry had a swift response. Within a year, both the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the New England Journal of Medicine published studies denying these findings. The articles were titled respectively, “Deaths due to medical errors is exaggerated in Institute of Medicine report" and “The Institute of Medicine report on medical errors-could it do harm?”
Guess they had to do something. The image of two 737s crashing every day for a year clearly wasn’t “on message” when it came to the AMA’s massive lobbying effort to enact laws to drastically limit compensation to harmed patients. And as these studies show, the push-back worked to some extent as a bunch of states responded to the epidemic of malpractice by capping damages to injured patients. Even as late as 2011, those anti-IOM studies were thrown in the face of patient advocates testifying against congressional legislation to drastically cap compensation to patients nationwide. (Check out this video, beginning at 3:56!)
So when news broke everywhere yesterday about the new article by Dr. Martin A. Makary of the Department of Surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, I admit I had to brace myself. Dr. Makary found that the IOM figure was “limited and outdated” because the number was likely four times higher. Indeed, medical errors are the third leading cause of death in America. The push back may have already begun.
Medical errors are not officially listed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as an official cause of death. Pro Publica, which first calculated the “third leading cause of death” figure in 2013, notes that Dr. Makary is “call[ing] for changes in death certificates to better tabulate fatal lapses in care. In an open letter, they urge the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to immediately add medical errors to its annual list reporting the top causes of death."
However,
Bob Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch for the CDC, disputed that the agency’s coding is the problem. He said complications from medical care are listed on death certificates, and that codes do capture them. The CDC’s published mortality statistics, however, count only the “underlying cause of death,” defined as the condition that led a person to seek treatment.
As a result, even if a doctor does list medical errors on a death certificate, they are not included in the published totals. Only the underlying condition, such as heart disease or cancer, is counted, even when it isn’t fatal.
Anderson said the CDC’s approach is consistent with international guidelines, allowing U.S. death statistics to be compared with those of other countries. As such, it would be difficult to change “unless we had a really compelling reason to do so,” Anderson said.
[And, he] said, it’s an “uncomfortable situation” for a doctor to report that a patient died from a medical error. Adding a check box to the death certificate won’t solve that problem, he said, and a better strategy is to educate doctors about the importance of reporting errors.
And therein lies the rub. Underreporting of errors is already a massive problem. (Check out the Center for Justice & Democracy’s Med Mal Briefing Book, p. 92 et seq., for lots of studies describing this phenomenon.) And if you think "fear of being sued" is the cause of underreporting, think again.
According to a January 2012 study, “Hospital employees recognize and report only one out of seven errors, accidents and other events that harm Medicare patients while they are hospitalized" because hospital employees do not seem to know what patient harm is and if they do, they think it is someone else’s job to report it.
Specifically, “[T]he problem is that hospital employees do not recognize ‘what constitutes patient harm’ or do not realize that particular events harmed patients and should be reported.… In some cases … employees assumed someone else would report the episode, or they thought it was so common that it did not need to be reported, or ‘suspected that the events were isolated incidents unlikely to recur.’”
Yet rather than trying to solve this problem, the medical community seems to be moving in the opposite direction – the direction of never reporting errors at all!
As Mark Twain may (or may not) have put it, “Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.”
NEWS
For Immediate Release
Contact: Deirdre Dickson-Gilbert
Phone: (832) 488-5765
Email: nammv1988@gmail.com
“They Trust Each Other Lies”
This is the BUZZ in the Medical Community
Talk of the Town
The talk of the town about Medical Malpractice as being the third leading cause of death is true, but there are very limited reasons of why that is occurring. Medical Malpractice has been a silent killer for decades and the ones who are being harmed are never thought about in the process. This issue is bigger than medication errors or complications but is really about the greed of medical establishments that have figured out how to create cash flow from harming patients. Seldom is there talk about the truths of these deaths and who is causing it. It is simply not an error when medical facilities and physicians’ cover-up a death because of fear.
System of Silence
Physicians seldom want to discuss or even acknowledge their part in the entire equation. There is a system of SILENCE that does not allow conversation about these deaths and the cover-ups for fear of being sued and losing their livelihoods. Many physicians have stated that they trust each other’s lies and just continue on in the process. There has been a system of manipulation that was well defined and oiled like a machine before many of those who were harmed even knew what hit them. There are protocols set in place of what to do when you hear Code Blue. There are ways to manipulate the records before one can find out what happens. Blame the patient or the family for the death. Just say the patient died of obesity or other underlying conditions, but don't say that the doctor was inebriated, don't say that the doctor left the operating room to view a YouTube video because he/she did not know what they were doing, don't say that the physician had killed before and SILENCE was the word.
Let’s Talk the Truth
If we are going to talk about this subject, let's talk the truth. Let's tell about how many physicians have criminal histories with no background checks, let's talk about the falsifying of medical records, let's talk about medical examiners who cover-up for hospitals to keep them from being sued, let's talk about no oversight and no review of medical errors, let's talk about the many people who have committed suicide because they were harmed or because they could never get the truth about their loved one's death, let's really talk about the SILENCE. Blame the attorneys who sue because they are just trying to make money. NO! The truth again is, SILENCE.....It was done and they did again and no one did a thing about it. They can make millions off of your harm and there is nothing you can do about it, so they do it again until it doesn't matter how many people they harm. This cycle becomes like a drug habit that can’t be broken.
Playing God is not an Option
Physicians are playing God and there are no legal remedies to stop them......Physicians would have you to believe as it has been sensationalized in the media that people just want to sue and that doctors are leaving states by leaps and bounds, but this is about the value being placed on, exaggerated, malpractice costs over that of human life. The real truth is about the public’s right to know if a hospital or doctor being paid for services has a history of malpractice suits and reprimand for reprehensible behavior which violates the vow and/or oath required of their profession. This issue with all of the necessary elements is about the capability of illustrating the need to reform Tort Reform, the Public Information Act, and other legislation and policy that allow medical negligence and other acts of harm and endangerment to go unanswered or only minimally compensated. This is about the millions of stories that will be un-heard only by legislators, hospital administrators, physicians, nurses, and American citizens who have no heart, and without which, are incapable of hearing, but they are not the majority. The majority are average, ordinary, law-abiding citizens who would not dare think of wasting time and energy on frivolous lawsuits, though we are all, as Tort Reform rhetoric implies, presumed to be.
It’s Not in Our Favor
Unfortunately, the majority does not know that the moral cards are not stacked in his or her favor. Should a loved one fall at the hands of a practitioner with a history of malpractice suits and reprimand for reprehensible behavior which violates the vow and/or oath required of their profession or by the practices of a hospital with a history of the same, the chances of attaining justice are nil. The average ordinary citizen, in an emergency situation, is incapable of making an informed decision as to where and to whom he or she should entrust the care of a loved one, because that information is private, protected by the Public Information Act. In the absence of information, life-threatening decisions are left to chance. People should have the right to fight for their lives, and knowledge has always proven to be the most formidable weapon. People have a right to know. People have the right to legal remedies in a court of law. People have the right to the truth and have those who reap havoc on a medical entity and its patients sanctioned and penalized. There are great doctors and there are plenty of BAD APPLES and it is time for change. We must be heard and we must be allowed to have the truth be told. We have been held captive inside of a closed capsule of abuse and these behaviors are dangerous and unacceptable.
The Alert System
Deirdre Gilbert, National Director of National Medical Malpractice Advocacy Association and its’ chapter directors says “they are working to alert the public to these truths.” We are petitioning for more accountability and oversight to ensure patient safety. Those of us still reeling from impact of medical negligence and malpractice, trying to regain our footing, came to realize that individually battling such a formidable foe, quietly struggling to climb insurmountable obstacles equates to silence. It ultimately became evident that our silence would not protect us, could not protect us; it is only when we stand up and speak out that this SILENCE would STOP.
Posted by: Deirdre Gilbert | May 04, 2016 at 05:58 PM