Doctors May Be Third Leading Cause of Death — All right!! USA — USA — We’re number ONE!
This week’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) is the best article I have ever seen written in the published literature documenting the tragedy of the traditional medical paradigm.
This information is a followup of the Institute of Medicine report which hit the papers in December of last year, but the data was hard to reference as it was not in peer-reviewed journal. Now it is published in JAMA which is the most widely circulated medical periodical in the world.
The author is Dr. Barbara Starfield of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health and she describes how the US health care system may contribute to poor health.
ALL THESE ARE DEATHS PER YEAR:
* 12,000 — unnecessary surgery 8
* 7,000 — medication errors in hospitals 9
* 20,000 — other errors in hospitals 10
* 80,000 — infections in hospitals 10
* 106,000 — non-error, negative effects of drugs 2
* These total to 250,000 deaths per year from iatrogenic causes!!What does the word iatrogenic mean? This term is defined as induced in a patient by a physician’s activity, manner, or therapy. Used especially of a complication of treatment.
found by Bubba Martin who says he’s almost been killed twice by doctors.
Just shows that a competent Doctor is as rare a find as a honest lawyer. This believeable to me because one of these hack jobs about killed my sister during “routine surgery”.
Heart Failure is the number one cause of death.
I have Heart Failure, but I haven’t died yet because I follow my doctor’s advice, take my meds and try and eat right.
50% of people that leave the doctor’s office don’t fill their prescriptions or do what the doctor prescribes. This eventually leads to death and the doctors get blamed.
Granted, people have to realize that medical students can and do graduate with a “C” average. With the dumbing down of America its getting worse. If you don’t trust your doctor then find a new one. There are plenty.
3. Not where I live, we have a critical shortage of doctors here. If you need to find a new doctor, you will be on a 3 month waiting list for a primary care physician. Its one of the reasons people go to the emergency room for stupid shit. I havent had a need for a physician since I moved here 3 years ago, so I dont even have a primary care doctor here I can see. I think this is happpening in a lot of places. I think they dont want to deal with Medicare or the insurance red tape.
Your link goes to a Web page dated 3/15/2000. And the numbers haven’t been getting any better over the years – only worse.
I don’t agree with #1 who says they’re all crooks. Totally not true. Doctors and nurses do the best they can. But their tools of the trade, pharmaceutical drugs and surgery, are just too dangerous. Any small mistake, an extra pill too many or a tiny infection after surgery, and the patient is dead.
The only thing that surprises me is that people are still surprised by these facts.
I actually like the analysis that much of our problem may be that we as a society view drugs and technology as the solution to every problem, rather than just being two available tools.
The best answer for this problem? Universal Healthcare! Distorting incentives like only a true socialism system, because the doctors will work safely…if “we” tell them to.
#5 the lawyers are the crooks the doctors are the hacks…
Two months ago I had nasal surgery to remove polyps. Nothing particulary serious or worrisome about it — fairly routine and this was the second time I had it done.
Except I wondered what happened while I was under that would explain why my right calf muscle was bruised and sore. The doctor never came around after the operation and he seemed uncomfortable during a follow-up at his office the next week. Hmm.
A great article, thanks for sharing it. I like my doctor just fine, but one’s own common sense is very useful.
The end of the article has useful solutions to the problem.
#2: No, dying is the leading cause of death. Ha ha, I got a million of ‘em!
…[slinks away] Yes, I need a vacation.
My Neck!!
My Back!!
MY NECK & MY BACK!!!
I’d sue, but i’ll settle out of court right now for $20
Is it the unspoken premise that these patients would not have died had they not received medical care?
I’ve been living in Japan for over a decade. I didn’t like the national health system here at first because I wasn’t used to it and you are forced to pay tax money for it even if you don’t use it. But I’ve grown to love it. It’s pretty good. It’s not perfect and just like in the US or any country, there are good and bad docs and facilities. But you have freedom of choice, it includes full dental and vision coverage, childbirth is basically FREE, hospitalization is cheap, child health care (including prescription drugs are FREE until age 4… It is much, much cheaper than in the US. It is a better and more complete “system”. It would never work or be possible in the US because of the entrenched system, special interests and politicians for sale. But it is a look at another way to do health care, and it casts the US “system” in an unflattering light.
I tore cartilage in both knees in a snowboarding accident. I had the right knee “scoped” in the US, they sent me home right after as a total basket case, and it cost me $11,000 out-of-pocket, plus insurance premiums. I had the left knee done here in Japan, and it cost me $300, including 5 days of being babied in hospital and rehab with a coach and equipment.
As for the taxes: my total Japan tax hit is 26% of my gross salary. This includes the national health coverage. My total US tax hit was 31%, including federal, state and local taxes…and that was WITHOUT ANY HEALTH COVERAGE AT ALL. You do the math.
US healthcare sucks unless you are rolling in money.
#14, Matt, must be nice. My premiums went up so high I can no longer afford them. Just to complete my story (yes, doctors tried to kill me twice, and my goodness, how I miss my retired flight surgeon):
1) Received 5 stitches for a minor wound on the hand (probably could have just let it go, but I had insurance so what the heck.) Doctor injected me with penicillin (which was clearly labeled on my patient form as a drug to which I’m allergic) and sent me into anaphylactic shock which nearly killed me.
2) Was discharged from one of the best hospitals in TX by a jerk quack, when I had an unhealed infected wound one foot long and one inch deep from sternum to groin and was told to get “home health care.” The nurses gasped, told me to seek another opinion. After going to another hospital I was told to remove my clothes and shoes, I was going into surgery immediately. If not for that trip, I wouldn’t be posting. Spent two weeks more for that one. My family was not amused.
Folks posting here are right, choose those doctors carefully. Like I said on another thread here, whatever happened to “do no harm?”
#13, Dan, I don’t know about the premise, but my wise flight surgeon told me that 90% of the time (for minor stuff at least), if the doctor doesn’t mess around too much, the patient will heal himself. There may be some truth to that, it’s worked for him and me.
Seems unfair to list the negative effects of drugs as a statistic. A lot of the time, drugs are given because the benefits are judged to outweigh the risks. For example, some drugs are harsh on the body because they need to be effective against cancer.
Without adding the drug statistic, the number of deaths is almost halved.
Some good points. Another thought. The majority of poor medical practice is done by a very small percentage of physicians. The same with bad or drunk drivers being only a small percentage of all drivers. Yet these few do the unnecessary surgeries, miss the obvious, and mis-prescribe drugs and treatments. Seldom are they held accountable, which is the biggest problem. They are allowed to screw up again and again with little or no oversight.
At the same time, people’s desperation will drive them to seek or accept unnecessary treatments. In my own case there are many times when my arthritis makes me wish I could take some Vioxx, even knowing the danger it poses. Cancer (and other) patients will often seek quack treatments when told that they are terminal.
#17, Mr. Fusion, Seldom are they held accountable, which is the biggest problem.
Correct. It’s so difficult to find an accredited doctor that will testify against another in a court of law, I had no luck at all with lawsuits against the quack that messed me up. Good Grief, they’re not accountable to anyone. Yet they claim their malpractice insurance is so high, they have to charge exorbitant rates for care
So who’s responsible — quacks or insurance companies? Are health care premiums so high because of quacks (malpractice), a litiginous society or folks that go to the doctor for a cold? Net research (and actuarial research) doesn’t yield a satisfactory answer.
First off, I love a seven year old study that shows there are 250,000 deaths a year give or take an error rate of 50,000, It amazes me that no one questions this number. Does anyone have any idea how long it would take to really review 250,000 charts?
Malpractice? In some states like Texas, there have been caps placed on pain and suffering. If malpractice cases were about poor care and not about money, the number of cases should not have gone down, and they have …drastically. Malpractice cases are about money not care.
A NEJM study showed there was no correlation between lawsuits and care. In fact, most often, the doctors who deserved to be sued rarely were.
Insurance companies follow Medicare’s lead, and THEY decide how much a doctor is to be paid. With any service, when prices are fixed, two things happen: quality goes down and supply goes down.
The fact is that insurance studies show that most patients will change doctors if they can pay Doctor B $10 less on a co-pay than Doctor A. If you are willing to sell a quality doctor out for $10, why should he care about you? There is a big difference between acceptable care and the best care, and you get what you pay for.
For all the bellyaching that has gone on here, people need to realize that the best way to get quality care is to vote with your feet and your wallet. But when you hand over the responsibility for payment to your employer and an insurer, I can guarantee you the average doctor is going to be a heckuva lot more interested in pleasing them than you. And doctors are going to please them by keeping care costs low.
It blows my mind how many free services people expect from doctors. Calling in prescriptions, talking to family members, phoning in referrals, copying charts, sigining forms. Those all cost money or time, which is money, and yet people expect those services for free. Every day, the average doctor spends between one third and one half of his time providing services without compensation, and that is before charity work.
That is the problem with American medicine. Everyone expects performance without compensation. Compensation is someone else’s job. Take back the power of the purse, people. When you do that, then you have the right to complain about poor performance.
Well said 19!! I couldn’t agree more.