Each year as many as 100,000 Americans die in hospitals from preventable medical mistakes. Today, more than a decade into the fight against medical errors, theres little reason to believe the risks have declined substantially for the 37 million people hospitalized each year. In fact, recent studies suggest a problem thats bigger and more complex than many had imagined. A report released in January on Medicare patients found that hospital staff did not report a whopping 86 percent of harms done to patients. If most errors that harm patients arent even reported, they can never be tracked or corrected, the Health and Human Services Department report pointed out. This latest study built on an earlier HHS study of Medicare patients that found one in seven suffered serious or long-term injuries, or died, as a result of hospital care. Researchers said about 44 percent of the problems were preventable. In another key study published last spring in the journal Health Affairs, researchers examined patient charts at three of Americas leading hospitals and found that an astounding one in three admissions included some type of harm to the patient. Mistakes run the gamut. The surgeon nicks a healthy blood vessel; a nurse mistakenly administers a toxic dose of medicine; the staff fails to adequately disinfect a room, and a patient contracts a dangerous superbug. The number of patients who die each year from preventable hospital errors is equal to four full jumbo jets crashing each week. If airline tragedies of that magnitude were occurring with such frequency, no one would tolerate the loss. A case in point: bloodstream infections that result from inserting a tube into a large vein near the heart to deliver medication. For years, these infections, which resulted in some 30,000 deaths annually, were viewed as largely unavoidable. Retrain your brain and learn how healing is easy . . . inyoungevity
Posted on: Thu, 05 Jun 2014 19:54:57 +0000