Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Now You Know Why I Keep Telling You to Avoid Doctors

A study by researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine says medical errors should rank as the third leading cause of death in the United States.

[...]

The authors, led by Johns Hopkins surgeon Dr. Martin Makary, call for changes in death certificates to better tabulate fatal lapses in care.

  NPR
Like that will ever happen.
In an open letter, they urge the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to immediately add medical errors to its annual list reporting the top causes of death.
That either.
Based on an analysis of prior research, the Johns Hopkins study estimates that more than 250,000 Americans die each year from medical errors. On the CDC's official list, that would rank just behind heart disease and cancer, which each took about 600,000 lives in 2014, and in front of respiratory disease, which caused about 150,000 deaths.

[...]

But no one knows the exact toll taken by medical errors. In significant part, that's because the coding system used by CDC to record death certificate data doesn't capture things like communication breakdowns, diagnostic errors and poor judgment that cost lives, the study says.
So...what you're saying is...screw-ups could be #1?
The CDC's published mortality statistics, however, count only the "underlying cause of death," defined as the condition that led a person to seek treatment. As a result, even if a doctor does list medical errors on a death certificate, they aren't included in the published totals. Only the underlying condition, such as heart disease or cancer, is counted, even when it isn't fatal.

The CDC's published mortality statistics, however, count only the "underlying cause of death," defined as the condition that led a person to seek treatment. As a result, even if a doctor does list medical errors on a death certificate, they aren't included in the published totals. Only the underlying condition, such as heart disease or cancer, is counted, even when it isn't fatal.
Stay out of hospitals.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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