Medical Mistakes Possibly The Third Biggest Cause Of Death

Medical Mistakes Possibly The Third Biggest Cause Of Death Photo Via: http://www.marjoriestieglermd.com In case you didn’t know, the No. 3 cause of death in the United States, behind both cancer and heart disease, is actually medical mistakes. These mistakes include anything from surgical disasters to accidental drug overdoses. In fact, Dr. Martin Makary and Michael Daniel from Johns Hopkins University medical school actually said that these preventable, medical mistakes actually cause anywhere from 200,000 to 400,000 deaths a year in the United States. How did they get this number? They did a careful, extensive count of these deaths. According to them, the only way to change this problem is to put a number to it. According to the duo, “If medical error was a disease, it would rank as the third leading cause of death in the U.S.” To put this into perspective, cancer and heart disease (the No. 1 and two causes of death in the U.S.) are actually extremely close when it comes to numbers. According to NBC News, “In 2012, 24 percent of all deaths were from heart disease 599,711 to be precise. And 582,623 deaths, or 23 percent of the total, were from cancer.” The actual No. 3 cause of death according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (also known as COPD). This disease actually causes 149,000 deaths a year. But the estimated number of deaths caused by medical mistakes (250,000 a year), would easily surpass this number. According to Makary: “We spend a lot of money on cancer and heart disease but we have not even recognized that medical error is the third leading cause of death in the United States. We have not as a country recognized the endemic problem of people dying from the care that they receive rather than the illness or injury for which they seek care.” Of course, this is a huge problem, and one that’s getting almost no attention. And this problem dates back to at least 1999, when the Institute of Medicine reported that over 98,000 people died every year from medical errors. Since this time, there have been many other studies, all of which report larger numbers, including this study, which goes as high as 400,000 deaths per year. So why exactly is this a problem? Well, for one thing, these errors aren’t typically recorded on death certificates. So not only are these mistakes being made, but they also aren’t being studied or, at the very least, changed. According to Makary: “Our national health statistics puts out a list of most common causes of death in the United States each year. That list is a big deal. It informs all of our research funding priorities and all of our public health campaigns … The medical coding system was designed to maximize billing for physician services, not to collect national health statistics, as it is currently being used.” This coding system is known as the International Classification of Disease code (ICD). easyhealthoptions.com Makary and Daniel analyzed the medical death rate from 2000 to 2008 using four different studies and came up with an estimated 250,000 deaths annually just from medical mistakes. And where does this land it? According to Makary, “That places it well above the current number three cause of death even using the lowest estimate. Ashish Jha, a Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health professor, says, “I see it almost every day in the hospital, some complication, somebody who’s admitted to the hospital, somebody who’s either severely disabled or occasionally even people who die from medical errors.” So the medical mistakes are actually being documented, though there’s such a variation as to what qualifies as a medical mistake. These mistakes can include infection, errors in surgery and even something as simple as a lack of follow-up. According to Jha: “When I look at this number or 250,000, it rings true for me. I think it’s a real number, and it matches what I see in hospitals every day. You know hospitals are really busy places, so this is not about doctors or nurses not being careful. I find most physicians, most nurses, are extremely diligent, hard-working, trying to do the right thing.” But still, doctors and nurses are still human, and mistakes are bound to happen. Even something as simple as giving a patient the wrong prescription can cost a life, so these mistakes are simply higher stake. According to Makary: “Patients falling through the cracks, patients discharged without adequate instructions on where to go to next, patients who we know are non-compliant with their medication continuing to be non-compliant while we have a disconnect with their medical system.” Still, the goal here isn’t to blame doctors and nurses. Instead it’s to bring this issue to light, and make a change. According to Makary: “Human error will always be in medicine and we will never get rid of human error but we can design systems to mitigate the impact and reduce the frequency of human error Not all complications are preventable. In this analysis we look specifically at complications that were considered preventable because substandard care was administered.” While we’re nowhere near where we need to be in terms of decreasing these medical mistakes (and bringing them to administrators’ attention), hospitals are making fewer mistakes, and hopefully the near future will see an even bigger decrease until there are so few that it’s no longer a concerning issue.