I recently wrote a post on how to protect yourself in a hospital.
This post came from my ongoing experience of working with my sister to help our 86 year old mother successfully survive the bureaucracy of the modern medical system.
I said in that last post that I was going to follow up with a post citing some statistics about the current state of the medical system and also to provide some submitted stories by people who have endured and triumphed despite the bureaucracy.
Let’s Look at Some Statistics
Disease is rampant in the USA. People are dying from cancer, stroke and heart disease in record numbers. Some people may argue that many of these deaths are preventable by life style changes.
But here is a sobering thought. The sixth leading cause of death in the USA is “medical errors”.
The Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) seminal study of preventable medical errors estimated as many as 98,000 people die every year at a cost of $29 billion.1 If the Centers for Disease Control were to include preventable medical errors as a category, these conclusions would make it the sixth leading cause of death in America. READ MORE …
Here are a few links to articles that are filled with these type of statistics.
http://medinnovationblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/health-reform-statistics-medical-errors.html
http://www.leanblog.org/2009/08/statistics-on-healthcare-quality-and/
http://www.patientsafetyfocus.com/patient-safety-current-st.html
What are People Saying
I decided to do a small survey and see if my experience was unique or had other people run into the same problems.
Well, the answer is that unfortunately I and my sister are not alone.
The following is a link to a PDF file showing 2 dozen responses to the question of what did you run into in the hospital and what things did you need to do to make the experience safe.
I have not edited the post at all. If there are spelling or grammar mistakes I left them in. Nor have I added any comments.
http://www.janeterickson.com/Hospital-Experiences.pdf
If you would like to join the conversation feel free to leave a comment below.