https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/09/24/maryland-hospital-safety-harm/
- State data shows serious harm inside Maryland’s 62 hospitals more than tripled between 2019 and 2022 to 769 incidents that ki-led or injured patients, reaching the highest level since the state began collecting patient safety data in 2004.
- Safety experts say the historic rise of dangerous missteps, probably fueled by staffing shortages and the strain of the pandemic, may signal systemic failures.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/01/maryland-hospitals-medical-mistakes/
- For example, more than 250,000 Americans die every year because of what are euphemistically called “medical mistakes.” Yes, that’s right: A quarter of a million Americans die every year from mistreatment by medical professionals.
- As if this were not bad enough, International Citizens Insurance rates the U.S. health-care system at No. 69, behind Croatia (No. 53), Saudi Arabia (No. 56), Iran (No. 58), Jamaica (No. 67) and Armenia (No. 68).
- This is a shocking indictment of the American health-care system, the most expensive in the world, for which we get only modest results.
- And let’s not forget about the outrageous cost of our medications. We pay more for lifesaving prescriptions than other countries.
- We get very little for the money we spend on this kind of care. In fact, we’re being ripped off by the medical establishment while private equity jacks up prices and our elected leaders look the other way
https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/report-minnesota-hospitals-made-errors-leading-to-21-deaths-178-injuries/
- There were 21 preventable deaths and 178 injuries at Minnesota hospitals last year due to medical errors, according to a new state health department report released Wednesday.
- Officials cited persistent pandemic problems impacting health care, like prolonged hospital stays and workforce shortages, as contributing factors to the uptick in "adverse health events," or avoidable mistakes that can lead to patients getting hurt or ki-led.
- The incidents, which span from medication errors and surgery on the wrong patient, rose for the second year in a row after years of stable numbers.
- In the 12-month period ending last October, there were 21 avoidable deaths, which is the most since 2006, the report said.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/19/health/diagnosis-error-study/index.html
- Misdiagnosis of disease or other medical conditions leads to hundreds of thousands of deaths and permanent disabilities each year in the United States, according to a report published this week.
- About 371,000 people die and 424,000 sustain permanent disabilities – such as brain damage, blindness, loss of limbs or organs or metastasized cancer – each year as a result.
- To make the estimate, researchers pulled from dozens of earlier studies to assess how often certain conditions were missed and how often that miss led to serious harms. That risk was then scaled by the incidence rate of new cases in the total US population.