Deadly Medical Mistakes

The Consumers Union Safe Patient Project "seeks to eliminate medical harm in our health care system through public disclosure of health care outcomes (such as hospital-acquired infection rates and incidents of medical errors) and information about health care providers (such as complaints against and license violations of physicians and hospitals).

The campaign also works to improve drug safety by ensuring that consumers have full information about prescription drugs (such as in direct-to-consumer ads and access to clinical trial results), by strengthening oversight of the FDA, and by ending practices that create conflicts of interest (such as drug company gifts to doctors). "

The SPJ encourages individuals to Share Their Stories to help them identify the problems and issues affecting patient safety.

Sign The Petition to President Obama and Health and Human Services nominee Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. Urge them to take action to make the ten year old Institute of Medicine vision a reality by producing the evidence we need to identify the steps for change.

Images from Photobucket. Authors unknown.

It's August 2009 and a dear elderly friend of mine was admitted to the hospital about two weeks ago. She has been transferred to other hospitals twice during this time. The second time that she was transferred, her chart from the previous hospital stated that she was on a "regular diet."

The fact that her food needs to be pureed is easily corrected. The fact that she is allergic to gluten, soy and nuts is not. If I had not been there to make the correction, the new hospital could have literally poisoned a person in their nineties who had just had a heart attack.

She has an infection around her heart and the recommended treatment is four weeks of intraveinous antibiotics. As we age, our skin thins and the nurses are having difficulty finding her veins. To avoid having to stick her repeatedly and adding to the multitude of bruises she's already received, they attempted to install a PICC line. Another professional medical company was called in to install it. As I watched the medical professional load a syringe, I asked what was in it. He replied that it was lidocaine, an anesthetic that she is allergic to. He then said, "Why? Is she allergic?"

I do not believe that he was going to ask either of us about the allergy and I am appalled that he did not check her chart. I doubt that it would do any good to report the issue, because he already knows he made a mistake and will very likely cover himself.

An IV tube that has either been removed or is to be inserted has been on her nightstand for two days, and a pile of dirty blankets has been on a chair in the room for nearly the past week.

I have taken pictures of all of this with my cell phone camera but am not sure where to go with this just yet. I will be keeping a journal and sending this story to the Consumers Union at the Safe Patient Project, and I'll keep you posted.

The current health reform debate offers an incredible opportunity to address patient safety as well as access to health care. Patient safety needs to be a major part of these reforms.

From the Executive Summary of the Safe Patient Project Report, "To Err Is Human, To Delay Is Deadly:"

"The U.S. health-care system needs nationwide mandatory, validated and public (MVP) reporting of preventable health care-acquired infections and medical errors. Medication errors-cited as a major problem by the IOM ten years ago-remain a serious problem today. The FDA, doctors, hospitals, and drug manufacturers must establish better practices at every stage of the treatment process to track and prevent harm from medication errors. Professional standards regarding patient safety should ensure competent care. While some progress has been made by private initiatives and through purchasing policies, regulators have not demanded universal competency testing for doctors and nurses.

Doctors and hospitals raise concerns that public reporting of medical harm will lead to frivolous lawsuits. But the best way to prevent claims is to put systems in place to prevent harm. Experience with public reporting in the states demonstrates the tort concerns about such disclosures is overstated. With a civil justice system weakened by limited compensation to harmed patients and inadequate oversight of health care, public reporting of preventable medical harm is today perhaps the only effective accountability measure we have."

President Obama certainly found that concern over malpractice lawsuits is prevalent among the medical profession during his speech at the annual meeting of the American Medical Association in Chicago on June 15, 2009. Obama bluntly told doctors that he is against their highest legislative priority - limiting malpractice awards - and earned a smattering of boos from an audience he was here to court for his health care overhaul plans.

I can't imagine anyone having the nerve to "boo" the President of the United States. This incident makes a profound statement of the medical profession's true agenda - protecting their bank accounts is a priority over protecting their patients.

Obama went on to take on others who take issue with parts of his plan as well.

Calling them "naysayers," "fear-mongers" and peddlers of "Trojan horse" falsehoods, Obama warned interest groups, lobbyists and others against using "fear tactics to paint any effort to achieve reform as an attempt to socialize medicine." "There are those who will try and scuttle this opportunity no matter what," Obama said. Read the full story here

Health care and patient safety should not be an ongoing debate over politics and money. A friend of mine once told her sleepy teenager that "The world is run by tired people." Imagine a country that is run by a society that is in poor health. I'm not referring to the government. I'm talking about you and me and all of the people that run all of the everyday services that we all take for granted. A workforce that is not functioning at full speed is bad enough. What if the next deadly epidemic is the result of one medical mistake that affects us all?

Sign the petition and support the Safe Patient Project. Speak out to your legislators. Remember that you're not just protecting yourself, you are working toward protecting your chidren and grandchildren as well. After all, don't we all want our younger generation to live better than we have?

When I worked toward changes for child welfare workers, I learned that when you can show actual costs in numbers it makes more of an impact than words.

Let Congress know how costly our failing health care system is by signing this petition:

Send Your Medical Bill To Congress

"All doctors should make enough out of those who are well able to pay to be able to do all work for the poor free. One thing that a poor person should never be expected to pay for is medical attention and not from an organized charity but from our best doctors. Your doctor bill should be paid like your income tax, according to what you have." ~ Will Rogers, American writer and actor