Is it possible that some of these deaths are attributable to computer related and/or y2k related failures? Will we see an uptick in deaths because of computer error related deaths this year?

Report: Thousands of Michiganians died last year due to medical errors

The Associated Press 2/6/00 12:45 PM

DETROIT (AP) -- A report's findings that as many as 3,534 Michiganians were among up to 98,000 hospital patients who died last year due to medical mistakes has prompted widespread scrutiny of patient safety and how to limit tragic occurrences.

But officials say it's impossible to pinpoint just how many people are maimed or killed by hospital mistakes in Michigan, which is not among 20 states requiring hospitals to report serious mistakes.

"I can't tell you how many deaths or injuries result from medical mistakes," Tom Lindsay, the director of the Michigan Bureau of Health Services, told The Detroit News for a story Sunday.

Released in November, the Institute of Medicine's widely accepted "To Err is Human" report quoted studies estimating that at least 44,000 and perhaps as many as 98,000 hospitalized Americans die each year from medical mistakes.

The lower death estimate would make hospital mistakes the nation's eighth leading cause of death; the higher estimate -- 98,000 -- would make it the fifth, killing more people than car wrecks or diabetes.

Regardless, the report has shaken the already heavily regulated medical establishment, causing everyone from nurses to President Clinton to take a new look at patient safety.

The three Michiganians who sat on the 19-member Institute of Medicine panel that wrote the report say the status quo at hospitals nationwide no longer is tolerable in a medical system claiming to be the world's best. "Despite the cost pressures, liability constraints, resistance to change and other seemingly insurmountable barriers," the institute wrote, "it is simply not acceptable for patients to be harmed by the same health care system that is supposed to offer healing and comfort."

Several institute members said mandatory reporting of serious mistakes is the first step to reducing the errors. The institute wants Congress to establish a nationwide mandatory reporting system for medical errors that cause injury or death.

"As soon as we're able to start that, I think we'll find that medical errors get corrected," said Gail Warden, president and chief executive of Henry Ford Health System in Detroit and a co-author of the report.

Other Michiganians on the institute panel were William Richardson, president and chief executive of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation in Battle Creek, and and Dr. Rhonda Robinson-Beale, a medical director with Blue Cross Blue Shield Michigan.

The institute attributed the mistakes to budget constraints and other issues such as litigation, the threat of which could complicate getting health professionals to report errors.

Most states, including Michigan, protect information from public disclosure if it is used in a "professional review." But institutions can lose confidentiality when they share the information with outside groups.

Health officials, the institute says, are so afraid of being sued that they hide errors rather than report and find ways to prevent them, leaving consumers too uninformed to demand better and too ignorant to protect themselves. "People are very, very reticent about reporting anything that could be misconstrued," said Robinson-Beale.

Dennis O'Leary, president of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations, knows firsthand that error reporting won't work without protections.

For five years, his commission has asked the 19,500 health care institutions it accredits -- 717 of them in Michigan -- to report errors that result in patient injury or death. But just 709 incidents nationwide were reported to the commission since 1995.

"We are just getting a pathetically small number, probably about 0.3 percent of what's out there. It's a failure," O'Leary said. "Hospitals tell us they are reluctant because if they sahre the information with us, then they waive their confidentiality protections."

In December, state Rep. Paul DeWeese, R-Williamston, and state Sen. John Schwarz, R-Battle Creek -- both medical doctors -- called on Gov. John Engler to appoint a commission that would study ways to reduce medical errors.

Their intent: explore how Michigan hospitals and other health care providers can reduce errors, such as mishandling records and administering the wrong medication.

http://hotnews.mlive.com/cgi-free/getstory.cgi?g7205_BC_MI--MedicalMistakes-M&ML&news&michnews

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), February 06, 2000

Answers

Up to 98,000 hospital patients died last year due to medical mistakes? How many were gun related? Hell, I'll take my chances with a bunch of drunk deer hunter's. At least my odds of surviving are better. That is unless I get shot and they want to take me to the hospital.

-- ~***~ (~***~@earth.ebe), February 06, 2000.