Don't Let A Hospital Make You Sick

The above headline comes from a February 08, 2009 article in Parade magazine. The article highlights a study by the US Institute of Medicine that showed that nearly 98,000 Americans die each year due to medical errors. The article makes the point that patients are safer by leaving the hospital sooner rather than later.

In what could be called a significant understatement, Joe McCannon, vice president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, responded by saying, "It is a very serious problem." Estimates for the costs of the hospital errors range up to $29 billion dollars or more per year.

The article noted several more common problems. They noted that about 1300 times a year, surgeons operate on the wrong person or remove the wrong limb or organ. Additionally doctors leave surgical instruments inside the body once in every 5000 surgeries. A 2007 article in the Annals of Surgery stated that operating on the wrong body part may occur as often as once per year in a 300-bed hospital. Perhaps the most chilling statistic noted in the article is that in the US, adverse drug events cause one out of five injuries or deaths to hospital patients.

The article has some common sense suggestions for consumers who are going into a hospital for surgery. One suggestion is to ask the surgeon to mark the surgical site with a pen in front of you, while you are still awake.

Medicare has recognized the problem that hospital mistakes have caused by issuing a new policy, that many would have thought was already in effect. As of October 2008 Medicare will no longer pay for medical bills from hospitals for mistakes they called "reasonably preventable". Additionally, hospitals are not allowed to charge the patients for the bills incurred for these mistakes.