Are doctors killing more people in the USA than any other cause major problem?

[joko104]

The #1 human caused wrongful death in the USA is by medical mistakes - at least 250,000 or more per year. Doctors and medical personnel kill twice as many people in a week than were killed on 9/11.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-america.html

Doctors and medical mistakes kill more people in ONE DAY than have been killed by all domestic and foreign terrorist attacks combined for TEN YEARS.

You are 5 times more likely to be killed going to a hospital than you are riding in a car 5 times over - and 50 times as many people are riding in a car.

You are over 1000 times more likely to be killed by going to the hospital than being on a combat patrol in Afghanistan.

Statistically, medical care in the USA is a non-stop slaughter - every day, every night. The press and MSM essentially never mention this - but go absolutely berserk if 12 people die because of a crazy man with a gun. That same day medical personnel killed nearly 1000.

Do you think medical accident deaths are a serious problem that the government should take emergency actions on? Nearly 1000 more people will be killed by doctors and medical personnel again today, again tomorrow, again the next day...

 

[antiquity]

The #1 human caused wrongful death in the USA is by medical mistakes - at least 250,000 or more per year. Doctors and medical personnel kill 2000 more people in a week than were killed on 9/11.

Doctors and medical mistakes kill more people in ONE DAY than have been killed by all domestic and foreign terrorist attacks combined for TEN YEARS.

You are 5 times more likely to be killed going to a hospital than you are riding in a car 5 times over - and 50 times as many people are riding in a car.

You are nearly 1000 times more likely to be killed by going to the hospital than being on a combat patrol in Afghanistan.

Statistically medical care in the USA is a non-stop slaughter - every day, every night. The press and MSM essentially never mention this - but go absolutely berserk if 12 people die because of a crazy man with a gun.

Do you think medical accident deaths are a serious problem that the government should take emergency actions on? Nearly 1000 more people will be killed by doctors and medical personnel again today, again tomorrow, again the next day...

Are you including abortion doctors?

 

[joko104]

Are you including abortion doctors?

No, those are not medical mistakes. This is not an abortion topic. Don't try to make it one.

 

[ecofarm]

We should sue them and then pay $500 for an aspirin.

 

[Mach]

Sure. I'll likely die from a medical mistake from 4 years ago. Sucks. (not soon, just will be a long term moderate risk sort of permanent thing)

I think the issue is oversight and accountability.

In any complex system, it typically needs a strong error feedback loop. Errors get identified, and corrected on the front end..continually, as a matter of routine and is itself verified to occur.
This is how all good systems work, whether it's making a good movie, a good restaurant, a good bank deposit process, a computer program, sending someone to the Moon, etc.

Right now, it's a crap-shoot as to whether or not your hospital or physician even knows what that means, much less implements it.
To compound this, doctors are terrified that an error could cost them a fortune, or even end their practice...the have extremely high resistance to identifying or even acknowledging errors.
Furthermore, doctors go to school for a long time, often are fairly intelligent, and they naturally feel a bit of elitism, especially in their own practice...all questions go to them (from below), they don't always have even the slighted notion that they should be watched over like some young intern...they feel they paid their dues.
Often the only way to get a doctor to acknowledge an error, is to take legal action, which makes this extremely rare compared to the number of issues, and also makes it even harder in the future, since the huge costs and harm to everyone, makes htis a painful remedy.

I'm generalizing, but you get the idea. That, is a recipe for disaster.

I have read about a number of groups that have decided to reduce certain hospital errors, and they find it's relatively easy to do, and they get incredible results. It's just no hard. If we're gonna have socialized anything, it should be medicine, and how we help very smart people, researchers, scientists, and doctors, develop the best systems to keep all of us healthy for as long as possible. In the age of big-data, many still use paper charts...it's mind-boggling.

They need help, and they won't like change, but it's needed just the same.

 

[Mach]

From reading up on George bush's former Sec. Treasury, Paul O'Neil. This guy was an unassuming rock-star of a process guy. Took over alcoa, analyzed the issues, and made it hum like it was nothing.
When he left office (because anyone so competent can't work for Bush for long, obviously), he has dedicated his time to just this sort of thing. Patient safety and quality.

Mr. O’Neill is a national leader in confronting the complex issues of health care and has long supported patient safety and quality. He is a member of the National Patient Safety Foundation's Lucian Leape Institute. In 1997, he co-founded the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative to address the problems of regional health care. He currently serves on the External Advisory Council for the James M. Anderson Center for Health Systems Excellence of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. His dedication to excellence in health care is further evidenced through his position on many boards and committees, including the Advisory Group for the National Leadership Commission on Healthcare; the American Society of Professionals in Patient Safety; Janetta Neuroscience Foundation; RAND Board of Health; Advisory Board, Stanford University School of Medicine, Clinical Excellence Research Center; Thedacare Center for Healthcare Value; and the American Red Cross.

One of ONeil's commnets on the whole process thing, pointing to an issue with how it's currently done:

“The convention, for example, in health and medical care is to have measures across the country and measures for individual institutions to find out how they compare to the national averages. It's very routine to find institutions that say, “We're better than the national average, and it's not possible to be better than we are.” So the establishment of the idea of national norms is the enemy of continuous improvement.”

That's right, the goal is "to be good", not to eliminate deaths (!).

I just have to emphasize...imagine everyone you have worked with at any job. Yeah, any job. You know that person who was a pretty good guy/gal, but was a bit lazy sometimes and cut a few corners? In medicine, people die.
The beauty of modern systems of operations, we know we cannot just make everyone awesome employees who care 24/7 and never make mistakes. We simply design process that allows for fallible people, who make mistakes, to have process in place that ensures most if not all of their mistakes are caught, and remedied, before they kill someone. It's beautiful, efficient, and saves lives.

 

[MrWonka]

The #1 human-caused wrongful death in the USA is by medical mistakes

In the example case given for the purposes of sympathy the little girl who died was only alive in the first place because Doctors saved her life. Furthermore, it is not known whether or not she would have died if she hadn't undergone the final round of chemo.

The inability to save a life is not quite the same as killing someone. We have enough problems with distrust of medical doctors in this country it is reckless and irresponsible to be spreading misinformation and irrational fear. If you're sick. Go to the doctor. Your odds are always better there.

 

[joko104]

In the example case given for the purposes of sympathy the little girl who died was only alive in the first place because Doctors saved her life. Furthermore, it is not known whether or not she would have died if she hadn't undergone the final round of chemo.

The inability to save a life is not quite the same as killing someone. We have enough problems with distrust of medical doctors in this country it is reckless and irresponsible to be spreading misinformation and irrational fear. If you're sick. Go to the doctor. Your odds are always better there.

No "inability to save a life" is counted as a medical error. The statistics are not for the number of people who die in hospitals. But your response is "shhhhhh, don't say anything because it might scare someone?!" :roll:

 

[Mach]

If you're sick. Go to the doctor. Your odds are always better there.

That sort of thinking is part of the problem. We get to choose the goals, and we can choose "continually improve to reach a goal of zero deaths".

Right now the goal is "whatever we figure we can manage, kind of".

 

[Waddy]

My youngest son works at a major teaching research hospital. He sees the medical doctor educational process close up. In recent years there have been many changes. Med students with Attention Deficit Disorder have no limits on test times, they have all day. They must be provided a quiet place to think. Even mildly Autistic people can get into med school, with the proper accommodations of course. All the people with learning disabilities you went to high school with are now represented in med schools across the country. Minorities who don't have qualifying grades and test scores get in based on the need for diversity.

Residency has been lightened up to reduce the tensions and pressures modern students aren't comfortable with. No more long hours and heavy case load.

I hope I never need one of these modern med students in an emergency room where they've been on their feet for fourteen hours and have to think fast on their feet. Mistakes will be made.

It ain't your grandpa's medical training anymore........

 

[Xelor]

Are doctors killing more people in the USA than any other cause major problem?

Medical errors? Probably "yes." Doctors? Almost certainly not, or at the very least, the study that gave rise to the CNBC article

• From the summary of the study referenced in the CNBC article:
  • The researchers caution that most of medical errors aren’t due to inherently bad doctors, and that reporting these errors shouldn’t be addressed by punishment or legal action. Rather, they say, most errors represent systemic problems, including poorly coordinated care, fragmented insurance networks, the absence or underuse of safety nets, and other protocols, in addition to unwarranted variation in physician practice patterns that lack accountability.

Aside:
Even the CNBC rubric article states expressly: "Medical errors are the third-leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer." How on earth does one infer thus assert that "medical errors," which aren't human beings (or even life forms), means "doctors," who are human beings? Why try to embellish or misrepresent the information presented?

Perhaps you've heard to the "test" wherein one person is told something and asked to tell another, and that person tells another, and so on and so on through ten individuals, whereupon what the tenth person would tell the next person isn't at all what was told to the first person? The representation of the CNBC article didn't even make it accurately from the author of the article to the OP-er of this thread who presumably read the article and couldn't even bring him-/herself to accurately relate what is in print and readable by all of us.

• Do people realize how demonstrably detrimental to their credibility as information sources that is? Apparently, too few do for the OP-er is hardly the first person I've seen mischaracterize others' statements when there's no call to do so. The article says "medical errors," not "doctors. Why not simply write (copy and paste) "medical errors?"
• Whatever has happened to discursive integrity, representational faithfulness and honesty? I really can't say, but I can say too few folks exhibit it.

Curiously, the folks whom I've most often noticed doing this are folks who cleave to strict constructionist interpretations of the Constitution. Can be any more intellectually unprincipled?

 

[MTAtech]

Thread title: "Are doctors killing more people in the USA than any other cause major problem?"

That is a matter of fact, not opinion. Either doctors are or they are not. Public opinion has nothing to say about it.

 

[Xelor]

Sure. I'll likely die from a medical mistake from 4 years ago. Sucks. (not soon, just will be a long term moderate risk sort of permanent thing)

I think the issue is oversight and accountability.

In any complex system, it typically needs a strong error feedback loop. Errors get identified, and corrected on the front end..continually, as a matter of routine and is itself verified to occur.

This is how all good systems work, whether it's making a good movie, a good restaurant, a good bank deposit process, a computer program, sending someone to the Moon, etc.

Right now, it's a crap-shoot as to whether or not your hospital or physician even knows what that means, much less implements it.
To compound this, doctors are terrified that an error could cost them a fortune, or even end their practice...the have extremely high resistance to identifying or even acknowledging errors.

Furthermore, doctors go to school for a long time, often are fairly intelligent, and they naturally feel a bit of elitism, especially in their own practice...all questions go to them (from below), they don't always have even the slighted notion that they should be watched over like some young intern...they feel they paid their dues.

Often the only way to get a doctor to acknowledge an error, is to take legal action, which makes this extremely rare compared to the number of issues, and also makes it even harder in the future, since the huge costs and harm to everyone, makes htis a painful remedy.

I'm generalizing, but you get the idea. That, is a recipe for disaster.

I have read about a number of groups that have decided to reduce certain hospital errors, and they find it's relatively easy to do, and they get incredible results. It's just no hard. If we're gonna have socialized anything, it should be medicine, and how we help very smart people, researchers, scientists, and doctors, develop the best systems to keep all of us healthy for as long as possible. In the age of big-data, many still use paper charts...it's mind-boggling.

They need help, and they won't like change, but it's needed just the same.

Red:
In my career as a management consultant, I had the opportunity to work with several medical organizations ranging from large medical practices to hospitals and insurance firms. In my experience, I observed that although the doctors are often have the most rigorous professional training among the various types of professionals with whom I've worked, they also exhibited the greatest degree of "professional hubris" and inability to compartmentalize the practice of medicine from the overall and integrated medical care delivery process.

The latter is what my firm was engaged to improve -- from a care giving standpoint and from an operational efficiency and effectiveness standpoint. I was astounded at how jejune was many physicians' comprehension of effective information documentation, communication and knowledge transfer. There was also the matter of some of them -- not all, but enough that it was something we noticed -- simply detest having to perform the administrative part of doctoring, providing medical care.

I should be clear: I've above remarked on what I and my teams observed re: doctors; however, doctors are not the only medical practitioners who are that way. I merely note the above expressly re: doctors because they are the folks whom, prior to doing the projects I did, they were the individuals of whom I expected to receive the least "push back" and yet they are the ones who most stridently objected to changes in to operational processes. I didn't, given their acute awareness of and use of fairly regimented diagnostic processes, expect them to as naive about operational (non-medical procedures) processes...things like effective handoffs, empowering subordinates, keeping other care delivery personnel "in the loop," timeliness of feedback, putting the right information in the right place, etc., etc.


Blue:
Screw getting acknowledgement of error. It's a PITA sometimes to get doctors to recognize that something is not necessarily errant but imperfect and that there's a realizable opportunity to eliminate the imperfection(s) or some of them.


Pink:
It is easy to to do so once the resistance to change factor has been aptly managed. Change always has three components: people, process and technology. Of the three, the latter two are easy to deal with.


Tan:
True that...even when they or their superiors have expressly engaged others to help them effect change....A year or two later, they realize the gains from change, but the process of getting them on board with making the change is often like "pulling teeth."

 

[The Mark]

The #1 human caused wrongful death in the USA is by medical mistakes - at least 250,000 or more per year. Doctors and medical personnel kill twice as many people in a week than were killed on 9/11.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-america.html

Doctors and medical mistakes kill more people in ONE DAY than have been killed by all domestic and foreign terrorist attacks combined for TEN YEARS.

You are 5 times more likely to be killed going to a hospital than you are riding in a car 5 times over - and 50 times as many people are riding in a car.

You are over 1000 times more likely to be killed by going to the hospital than being on a combat patrol in Afghanistan.

Statistically, medical care in the USA is a non-stop slaughter - every day, every night. The press and MSM essentially never mention this - but go absolutely berserk if 12 people die because of a crazy man with a gun. That same day medical personnel killed nearly 1000.

Do you think medical accident deaths are a serious problem that the government should take emergency actions on? Nearly 1000 more people will be killed by doctors and medical personnel again today, again tomorrow, again the next day...

I don't know if this is part of the reason, but it is my understanding that doctors and other medical staff are often overworked and always human.

Mistakes will happen.

Probably we need more staff everywhere, but since profit is involved that probably won't happen as it'd cost more.



I blame capitalism for this.

 

[joko104]

I blame capitalism for this.

Why? What is your reasoning? People would work better and more would go into the profession if there was no profit and they made nothing monetarily out of it?

 

[chuckiechan]

The #1 human caused wrongful death in the USA is by medical mistakes - at least 250,000 or more per year. Doctors and medical personnel kill twice as many people in a week than were killed on 9/11.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-america.html

Doctors and medical mistakes kill more people in ONE DAY than have been killed by all domestic and foreign terrorist attacks combined for TEN YEARS.

You are 5 times more likely to be killed going to a hospital than you are riding in a car 5 times over - and 50 times as many people are riding in a car.

You are over 1000 times more likely to be killed by going to the hospital than being on a combat patrol in Afghanistan.

Statistically, medical care in the USA is a non-stop slaughter - every day, every night. The press and MSM essentially never mention this - but go absolutely berserk if 12 people die because of a crazy man with a gun. That same day medical personnel killed nearly 1000.

Do you think medical accident deaths are a serious problem that the government should take emergency actions on? Nearly 1000 more people will be killed by doctors and medical personnel again today, again tomorrow, again the next day...

We have defacto sicialized medicine in this country. Thus, doctors are doing triage.

 

[The Mark]

Why? What is your reasoning? People would work better and more would go into the profession if there was no profit and they made nothing monetarily out of it?

Wasn't suggesting that.

Silly person.

I was thinking that more and better trained staff would reduce mistakes, but that the profit requirement in many of these situations means more money can be made if staff is overloaded.

Failures covered by insurance, cost passed on to customer, who cannot shop around because little competition exists for some of these things.
Especially if travel is an issue.

 

[Felis Leo]

Wasn't suggesting that.

Silly person.

I was thinking that more and better trained staff would reduce mistakes, but that the profit requirement in many of these situations means more money can be made if staff is overloaded.

Failures covered by insurance, cost passed on to customer, who cannot shop around because little competition exists for some of these things.
Especially if travel is an issue.

Is it your opinion, The Mark, that publicly-funded firms and services (in which there is not profit motive or response to market changes) attract the best people for the job and allocate their resources in a better manner than private firms and services?

 

[Waddy]

Why? What is your reasoning? People would work better and more would go into the profession if there was no profit and they made nothing monetarily out of it?

One of the projects my youngest son works on is developing "scripts". They are now used by almost every doctor every time you go in for an office visit. Does your doctor have a tablet with him/her that they glance at while questioning you during the office visit? Well, that tablet has the list of recommended questions the doctor should ask. (The "script"). Then it suggests possible health problems (diagnosis). Then it suggests what tests should be run. Then it suggests which medicines to prescribe. These scripts are necessary because medicine is always becoming more and more complicated and the quality of practitioners is always going down. We've outstripped the number of really smart people who want to be doctors. Nothing new, it's been happening in other fields as well. Maybe just matters more in the health field.

 

[chuckiechan]

Wasn't suggesting that.

Silly person.

I was thinking that more and better trained staff would reduce mistakes, but that the profit requirement in many of these situations means more money can be made if staff is overloaded.

Failures covered by insurance, cost passed on to customer, who cannot shop around because little competition exists for some of these things.
Especially if travel is an issue.

Not the least of which they are bringing half dead patients to the ER rather than letting them die in the hallway, so a natural death now becomes a medical error. We have more and more people moving among us that are hanging onto life by a thread due to “the miracle of medicine” on borrowed time.

Medicine should maintain our health, not try to work miracles to avoid a lawsuit.

 

[The Mark]

Is it your opinion, The Mark, that publicly-funded firms and services (in which there is not profit motive or response to market changes) attract the best people for the job and allocate their resources in a better manner than private firms and services?

It depends on how they're set up and how they select and retain staff, more than the private or public nature of the firm or service.

I think the motive of profit can be positive in some areas, but I'm becoming more and more convinced that it has a negative effect in health care provision.

 

[year2late]

Medical errors? Probably "yes." Doctors? Almost certainly not, or at the very least, the study that gave rise to the CNBC article

• From the summary of the study referenced in the CNBC article:
  • The researchers caution that most of medical errors aren’t due to inherently bad doctors, and that reporting these errors shouldn’t be addressed by punishment or legal action. Rather, they say, most errors represent systemic problems, including poorly coordinated care, fragmented insurance networks, the absence or underuse of safety nets, and other protocols, in addition to unwarranted variation in physician practice patterns that lack accountability.

Aside:
Even the CNBC rubric article states expressly: "Medical errors are the third-leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer." How on earth does one infer thus assert that "medical errors," which aren't human beings (or even life forms), means "doctors," who are human beings? Why try to embellish or misrepresent the information presented?

Perhaps you've heard to the "test" wherein one person is told something and asked to tell another, and that person tells another, and so on and so on through ten individuals, whereupon what the tenth person would tell the next person isn't at all what was told to the first person? The representation of the CNBC article didn't even make it accurately from the author of the article to the OP-er of this thread who presumably read the article and couldn't even bring him-/herself to accurately relate what is in print and readable by all of us.

• Do people realize how demonstrably detrimental to their credibility as information sources that is? Apparently, too few do for the OP-er is hardly the first person I've seen mischaracterize others' statements when there's no call to do so. The article says "medical errors," not "doctors. Why not simply write (copy and paste) "medical errors?"
• Whatever has happened to discursive integrity, representational faithfulness and honesty? I really can't say, but I can say too few folks exhibit it.

Curiously, the folks whom I've most often noticed doing this are folks who cleave to strict constructionist interpretations of the Constitution. Can be any more intellectually unprincipled?

To the bolded, I think there is some good information. Protocols help. It not only gives a systematic approach to handling specific issues, it helps with the things that are out of the doctors immediate control. If protocol says for issue X they need to have drug A and device K...it is easier for the hospital to plan ahead to assure proper availability of those supplies. It helps the hospitals because knowing ahead that they will need a specific drug or item they can get the drug or item cheaper. By having protocols, it allows the nursing staff to become acquainted with a process and excel at it. Deviation from protocols is possible, but sticking to tried and true protocols in most instances is the safest. Easier to justify with persnickety insurance companies as well.