With America’s world-renowned medical schools and the most advanced medical research, this country should be the best place for those seeking medical attention. However, a recent study suggests that hospital patients may be walking out with more problems than they came in with.
The study looked at problems with patient safety in 10 North Carolina hospitals and is considered to be one of the most rigorous attempts to collect this type of data since 1999. Conducted between 2002 and 2007, the study found that harm to patients was not only common but that the frequency of these instances did not decrease. Hospital-acquired infections and complications from procedures or drugs were among the most common problems patients encountered.
Compared to other states, North Carolina has been more involved in efforts to improve patient safety. Ironically, the study found that 18 percent of patients in the state suffered harm from medical care, with 2.4 percent of the problems contributing to patients’ deaths — not exactly an “improvement.”
While it would be nice to think these statistics reflect conditions in North Carolina hospitals alone, lead author of the study, Dr. Christopher P. Landrigan, told The New York Times “It is unlikely that other regions of the country have fared better.”
A recent report by the Department of Health and Human Services found that in October 2008, 134,000 Medicare beneficiaries across the country experienced “adverse events” during in-patient care. Of those patients, 15,000 died due to medical mistakes. The word “mistake” doesn’t seem a fitting addition to the medical profession.
However, mistakes like these have been happening for years. In 1999, the overwhelming amount of medical mistakes reported by the Institute of Medicine “led to a national movement to reduce errors and make hospital stays less hazardous to patients’ health,” said Denise Grady in a New York Times article. The need for these efforts is disturbing; a hazardous hospital is like a secular church: an oxymoron.
Even with evidence of the high frequency of medical mistakes, hospitals are not being held accountable.
“We need a monitoring system that is mandatory,” Landrigan told the New York Times. “There has to be some mechanism for federal-level reporting, where hospitals across the country are held to it.”
Though it seems odd to implement measures to ensure that hospitals fulfill what they’re intended for, which is to improve patients’ health, what is more frustrating is the reason behind the “mistakes.”
Landrigan and his team of researchers found that of the adverse events that occurred at the North Carolina hospitals, 63.1 percent were preventable. This evidence seems to suggest that the problem of medical mistakes may not be associated with what hospital employees are doing, but rather, with what they aren’t doing.
Measures to prevent infections and other health risks are part of every hospital’s standard protocol. When these precautions aren’t taken, hospital employees walk a fine line between irresponsibility and downright negligence. If failure to follow preventative measures occurs and this oversight leads to infection, injury or death, the medical effect is no longer a mistake, but malpractice.
Obamacare established more affordable health care so that more individuals could enjoy the benefits of modern medicine and the medical attention received at hospitals. Now all we need is to convince people that they’ll be safe in them.
Send comments to Jessica at jrstone3@asu.edu
