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Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in U.S. (2016)

hopkinsmedicine.org

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Re: Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in U.S. (2016)

#71

Post by ncmncm »

simonh wrote: post #51
nenadst wrote: post #26

apparently based on very flawed arguments https://gidmk.medium.com/medical-error-is-not-the-third-lead...

Not just flawed argument, but wildly inaccurate data that was then grossly misapplied. Unfortunately a lot of people on HN will just read the headline and think this is true, when it's very far from being the case. I wish we could link this whole thread to the refutation instead of further propagating this misinformation.

We don't know whether it is the case or not. It could just as easily be worse than it says.

Probably is.

If I had to tell you about all the medical mistakes experienced by just my immediate family, just the facts, I would be at it all day long.

Re: Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in U.S. (2016)

#72

Post by sam_goody »

It "surpassed... respiratory disease, which kills close to 150,000 people per year."

For proportion, according to the CDC[1] there were an estimated 100,300 drug overdose deaths in the United States during 12-month period ending in April 2021

Although this report is from 2016, which was before COVID and mandatory masking. WebMD says that in the interim, deaths from respiratory diseases have also soared, but I couldn't find any numbers.

[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2021/...

Re: Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in U.S. (2016)

#73

Post by hobs »

arethuza wrote: post #37
basisword wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Mark Cuban's project of selling off-brand medication for cheap is great It's great and going to help a lot of people. But it's still not cheap compared to a lot of other countries which either provide free medication or medication for a fixed fee per item (usually around $10-20, varies by country).

As someone who lives in a country where medication is "free", I always like to clarify that "free" in these kinds of contexts means "free at the point of delivery" - we're all perfectly aware that they are paid using money from taxpayers.

Who have an insanely better price anyway because of their negotiating power as a nation instead of an individual payee.

Re: Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in U.S. (2016)

#74

Post by ncmncm »

ChrisRR wrote: post #44
danuker wrote: post #2

Relevant: the US spends double the amount of other countries on healthcare, yet has a life expectancy 3 years shorter. https://ourworldindata.org/us-life-expectancy-low

Who could've expected a country that glamourises gluttony would have a shorter life expectancy?

That is not why we are sick. We are sick because practically everything pushed on us is pumped full of sugar.

Re: Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in U.S. (2016)

#75

Post by papito »

DicIfTEx wrote: post #20

And a sizeable portion of that medical error is due to poor device UX: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XJbwN6EZ4I

I will remind myself of this when I feel an oncoming panic attack before releasing to production the code that will kill absolutely zero people, even in theory.

Re: Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in U.S. (2016)

#76

Post by ncmncm »

giantg2 wrote: post #61
ncmncm wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main cause was completely insane specifications. With a reasonable design the plane would not have become uncontrollable under any possible sequence of events, training or no, familiarity or no.

True, but we live in an age where we we trust our lives with computers so that we can do things we couldn't do otherwise. Flight control computers are necessary for most new commercial and military aircraft because they're fly by wire or can be uncontrollable by nature (Max, V22, etc). We're at the point that the FAA and people in general don't care about an inherent instability if the computer can fly it.

The computer was not flying it. The computer was actively fighting the pilot, who was desperately trying to keep it flying, while the computer was forcing it to crash instead.

To be clear: with the computer entirely powered off, the plane would have flown just fine. Not exactly like other 737s, but more like them than anything else.

Re: Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in U.S. (2016)

#79

Post by willcipriano »

giantg2 wrote: post #67

“Incidence rates for deaths directly attributable to medical care gone awry haven’t been recognized in any standardized method for collecting national statistics,” That's because they're hard to standardize. What qualifies as a medical error? It's easy to go back after the fact and analyze a case where someone has a poor outcome and say 'we should have done this another way'. That doesn't mean there was any indicatio…

> What qualifies as a medical error?

If we just classified things that are obvious. Wrong medication applied (ie paper says to deliver 10mg of Advil but you got a vitamin C tablet), wrong leg amputated, wrong patient data looked at leading to a bad diagnosis. We would likely find a large number of incidents, however no way on earth will you get the American medical cartel to report on them honestly.

Re: Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in U.S. (2016)

#80

Post by jcims »

pjc50 wrote: post #66
sschueller wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is insane. These device UIs should be standardized and any manufacturer making a significant UI change to their product should not be permitted to sell it under the same name and number. The FDA should be looking at this before approving such devices for use. Don't aircraft have more or less standardized controls and displays?

Good way to make medical tech even less feasible and affordable.

In other words, there’s no free lunch. Regulations can be incredibly expensive to support and almost always stifle innovation and increase time to bring a product to market.

Sometimes it’s still worth it. The aviation industry has had to deal with this forever because its hard to hide a plane crash. But in the end we have a very reliable mode of transportation despite its inherent risks.

Accidentally overdosing an elderly or critical patient? Hell the nurse that did it might not even know.

I’m sure there are ways to classify products to help with this. Anything where operator error creates a life safety issue, like IV pumps, could have some pretty rigorous controls over UX modifications.

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