Hospitals Can Be Dangerous Places to Be
Physicians determined that about one in seven patients (13.5%) experienced at least one serious instance of harm from medical care that prolonged their hospital stay, caused permanent harm, required life-sustaining intervention, or contributed to their deaths. Projected to the entire Medicare population, this rate means an estimated 134,000 hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries experienced harm from medical care in one month, with the event contributing to death for 1.5%, or approximately 15,000 patients.
Strikingly, medication errors factored in more than half the patient fatalities in our sample, including use of the wrong drug, giving the wrong dosage, or inadequately treating known side effects. Such events were commonly caused by hospital staff diagnosing patients incorrectly or failing to closely monitor their conditions.
Full article on medical mistakes made in hospitals.
Agree with the lede. Hospitals are dangerous places to be.
I agree with Ken and the lede. Try surgi centers. Minute clinics. Even shamans and witch dodctors are probably a safer bet.
Is there anyone that thinks a hospital is a decent place to be? I don’t even like visiting people in the hospital. I’m afraid I’m going to pick up some nasty bug while I’m there.
Yes, hospitals are dangerous. Dont go if you dont need to go. OTOH, the lady we took to the OR last night avoided the hospital for way too long.
Query- There are currently a number of Medicare driven initiatives to improve care. I know of none, at least at my hospitals or any friends in practice, that are driven by private insurers. Is anyone aware of any?
Steve
“steve”, I am shocked at your statement. AHIP’s Center for Policy and Research has a whole line of publications addressing how Medicare Advantage patients have superior outcomes to patients in the traditional Medicare monopoly (http://www.ahipresearch.org/). I wrote a lengthy study on this topic, in anticipation of Obamacare’s Medicare cuts (http://tinyurl.com/23lmoqr).
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, Blue Shield, Catholic Healthcare West, and Hill Physicians’ Group launched a collaboration on costs and quality for a large commercial client that is reportedly successful (http://tinyurl.com/27h8k9u). I know about this one because I live here.
Maybe efforts by private insurers to improve hospital outcomes are just promoted less than Medicare’s. After all, a government-led effort will be more interested in publicity than real outcomes.
With respect to the Inspector General’s report (http://tinyurl.com/27pb6se) which is the topic of this article, the report does not clarify whether the Medicare patients were in the traditional Medicare monopoly or Medicare Advantage. From the language in the report, I think that they were all in the traditional Medicare monopoly. In any case, the report would have benefitted from differentiating between the two, because there is a growing literature describing superior outcomes in Medicare Advantage plans.
Steve. hospitals do not compete on quality and do not make quality information available to patients because they do not compete on price. As has been pointed out at this site before, price competition leads to quality competition. In the international medical tourism market, hospitals routinely compete on price and quality.
@Joe- They do in Pennsylvania. It just does not work. Our marketing people have found that they are unable to capture new patients even with the best statistics, the prettiest nurses (direct quote) or the best food. My hospital tried to compete by price, hoping we could get insurance companies to direct more patients our way. Failed miserably, so we just raised prices.
Steve
“steve,” I’m afraid you have been part of the system too long. Your idea that hospitals “compete” by getting insurance companies to direct more patients your way indicates the problem we are facing.
This is not real competition, because no patient knew how much it costs to have a procedure done at your hospital versus other hospitals. This is not the case with laser-eye surgery or other procedures for which people pay out of pocket.
Don’t people find it strange that in health insurance, a network of “preferred providers” is considered a “benefit” of the policy, whereas in auto insurance, “steering” a policyholder to a preferred glass or body shop is often illegal?