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.
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.
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.
#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?
#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.
Well said 19!! I couldn’t agree more.
What I think may be lacking would be a comparison with people that did not seek help. To blame hospitals and doctors for all of these deaths does ignore the vast number of people they help. The only reason I bring this up is that otherwise, people might decide it was better to stay home than go to the hospital for serious illness and injury.
As for being number one though, we are. We spend 15% of our GDP on health care. No other country comes close. I think the next highest is about 9%.
Ever tried to talk to a doctor on the phone? Good luck.
Here we go again. I want performance without compensation. Ever offered to pay a doctor to talk on the phone? You want a service for free and when you don’t get it, you gripe.
If a soup kitchen starte serving cyanide in their food, the patrons would have no right to complain. I don’t know anyone that hasn’t had a friend or relative killed by poor diagnosis.
If a soup kitchen gave people cyanide, they would be dead and couldn’t complain. Given how many people you know have died at the results of poor care, I would expect their families have gotten rich off all those malpractice cases.
For all those so called deaths at the hands of crummy doctors, there is a John Edwards. You know, the presidential candidate getting $400 haircuts but who cares about the poor. Mr. Edwards sued a doctor and a hospital for delivering a baby with cerebral palsy, and he won and made millions. Later studies showed conclusively that kids developed CP in the womb and not upon delivery.
So a doctor was wrongly accused of crippling a child. Well, at least, he still has his BMW. And besides, he probably screwed someone else over too, right?
24. I would be glad to pay a doctor for a phone consult. I would be glad to be able to get in to see a doctor and I dont care if he is more expensive than the emergycare doc down the street. Like I said, there is a shortage of primary care physicians in this area SW Colorado, so you doctors out there, come on down, we need you and we arent afraid to pay for it. As for now, if I get sick, I have no choice but to go to the hospital.
#24, JZ, Here we go again. I want performance without compensation. Ever offered to pay a doctor to talk on the phone? You want a service for free and when you don’t get it, you gripe.
Darned right I gripe when the doctor I just paid $400 / hr. messes up my Rx. He darned well better answer the phone. I’m certainly not going to drive back and throw away another Franklin just for his mistakes.
When fellow astronomers and clients need support on the phone, I do it, since without friends and clients, I have no business.
“If a soup kitchen gave people cyanide, they would be dead and couldn’t complain. Given how many people you know have died at the results of poor care, I would expect their families have gotten rich off all those malpractice cases.”
Lets approach those comments in the oppisite order, shall we?
“Given how many people you know have died at the results of poor care, I would expect their families have gotten rich off all those malpractice cases.”
Malpractice requires proof of neglegence. Neglegence is not poor care, it is the screwing up royally, and further it has been made much harder to prove in recent years. Further, not everyone is litigious; when my Grandmother was killed by a poor diagnosis followed by a stubborn doctor who refused the right tests (cost too much) we didn’t sue them out of existence, because it wouldn’t have solved anything.
“If a soup kitchen gave people cyanide, they would be dead and couldn’t complain.”
Actually, if they were foaming at the mouth they would have a sublethal dose of the poison; lethal doses generally don’t take that long to act. Biochemistry beats arrogance once again. By the way, do you know that you are a monster? I scold you for arrogance, and then you prove it by letting that filth escape from your fingertips. Did your nanny beat you as a child? Are you, perhaps, suffering from an odd form of Tourettes syndrome that causes you to vomit out monstrous bile against your fellow human beings on forums? When you place your stethoscope on your chest for a check, do you hear a whirring sound? Because I really am amazed by your complete lack of a heart.
Actually, #27, I didn’t expect anyone got a dime from all of the “deaths” you claim to have suffered at the hands of doctors. Had there actually been a suit, you would have been forced to see the other point of view, and clearly, you are oblivious to it. You obviously are blaiming yourself for these deaths and hoping to transfer the blame to someone, anyone else.
when my Grandmother was killed by a poor diagnosis followed by a stubborn doctor who refused the right tests (cost too much) we didn’t sue them out of existence, because it wouldn’t have solved anything.
So you let this quack off the hook because “it wouldn’t have solved anything”? You made no complaint to a medical board and did not seek out an attorney to sue. If this doctor is as bad as you say, what does it say about you that you do nothing to prevent somethng like this from happening to someone else? Talk about a complete lack of heart.
And your grandmother probably could have gotten traditional Medicare. Doctors arent penalized for ordering tests with traditional Medicare, so my guess is that she switched to a Medicare HMO to save a few bucks. Now I know why my comments bothered you so much. They were right on target.
FWIW, I am sorry as to what happened with your grandmother. But I am not surprised.
#25 Offers to PCPs are through the roof right now. Starting offers of $250k are common place, but no one is going into that field now. What is happening with PCPs is that the rates have been undercut so much that PCPs have to align themselves with an alternate payor source. And that payor demands that they and not the patients be served first. And who wants to deal with that?
The typical woman who balks at a $20 co-pay has no problem paying thousands for a boob job. So why be a PCP when you can be a plastic surgeon? And you certainly do not have to deal with rabid family members like #27 claiming you killed a loved one with a bad boob job. Well… maybe not as much anyway.
We did make complaints to the medical board, and made appropriate inquiries, we merely did not sue. You assume so much, it is amazing that you haven’t died in a car accident yet, from assuming there is no one in the other lane. Indeed, you seem to have not read the study in question; there is no transference or blaming without both sides represented here, as cases in doubt were excluded, and all data was derived -from the hospital’s own records.- Your bizarre state of denial has somehow failed to grasp that this data survived peer review in one of the best medical journals around, the Journal of the American Medical Association. Statistics and evidence is on my side, all you have is assumption and supposition.
Now, lets speak for a moment about transference. You accuse me of lacking heart, but in the space of two comments you have managed to suggest that the poor should merely die rather than complain if they cannot afford food, and that my grandmother deserved to die for having a private medical plan. Then you wrap it up by saying that you are not surprised that she died, based solely upon faults in our family that you have merely assumed to be there. Oh, then you wrap that up by saying that the “typical woman” has no problem paying thousands for breast enhancement, but is too cheap to pay a $20 copay. This is, of course, odd since not nearly the majority of women have had, or will have, a “boob job,” and I can’t think of any woman in my circle who refuses to copay. This fetid stereotype indicates that you are not only crass, heartless, and stupid, but also sexist. I repeat, you seem to be a monstrous human being, who knows only how to assume and throw bile, while carefully guarding your precious view of the world like it is the greatest of treasures. A bit of introspection would do you a world of good. May I suggest a walk in the park?