Healthcare Industry News
Health care bills sidestep medical errors issue
Friday, 16, Oct 2009
Health care legislation now before Congress takes only modest steps to address a problem that is far more deadly than inadequate medical insuance -- medical error.Studies show that preventable medical errors -- ranging from poor sanitation to mistakes during surgery -- kill four times as many people as the lack of medical insurance.In August, a national Hearst investigation, Dead by Mistake, concluded that up to 200,000 people per year die from medical errors and infections in the United States.
It also pointed out that 10 years after a landmark federal study, To Err Is Human, first highlighted the problem, many of the solutions the study proposed have not been adopted. The entire Hearst report can be found at www.DeadbyMistake.comNow, a Hearst analysis shows that the three health care reform bills under consideration by Congress also do not include key solutions long ago envisioned in To Err Is Human and lobbied against by the health care industry ever since.
