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

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

#171

Post by InitialLastName »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #105
synu wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a moratorium? It feels like this conversation has been happening endlessly for years now.

Yes there was. Questioning of corporations, their motives, or their claims, was verboten. Maybe it still is, someone just accused me of being "far-right" for the thought-crime of questioning Pfizer's profiteering, lmao.

> Maybe it still is, someone just accused me of being "far-right" for the thought-crime of questioning Pfizer's profiteering, lmao.

Well, no, you accused yourself of that; they just played along.

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

#172

Post by giantg2 »

dTal wrote: post #106
giantg2 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Don't aircraft have more or less standardized controls and displays?" Commercial pilots (and military) are required to train and qualify on a particular aircraft before being allowed to fly it. Controls can differ, but it's generally the difference in flight characteristics/handling that is the difference. Although we can see that the different computer related controls and lack of training were a factor in the Max…

Ah yes, the training on what to do if the computer suddenly decides to crash your airplane out of the blue. I feel this framing mis-allocates blame away from Boeing and towards airlines. The MAX was specifically designed to not require a new type rating (they have now introduced one). And no amount of training is a reasonable substitute for the autopilot with a habit of nosediving into the ground because you were too…

"And no amount of training is a reasonable substitute for the autopilot with a habit of nosediving"

If they would know that the system even existed then maybe they would have known how to disengage it.

Yes, the design was flawed. Even then, you train for equipment failures because everything can break. It's hard to do that if your not even told that the MCAS exists.

The training aspect still squarely places blame on Boeing and the FAA for crearing/approving a design that didn't mandate additional training.

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

#173

Post by ClumsyPilot »

deltaonefour wrote: post #163
Nevermark wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think that the healthcare industry is very good at avoiding blame and sweeping blameworthy incidents under the rug. I expect the data can't be completely trusted in either direction.

Customer satisfaction is more trust-able. The incentive for retaliation is simply customer unhappiness. Patients don't just sue doctors because doctors are sitting on a pile of money, people don't behave this way. Most People sue because they are pissed. However if you caused someones death and don't want to go to jail... well that can be swept under the rug, people actually do behave this way.

> Customer satisfaction is more trust-able.

Dead men dont leave reviews

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

#174

Post by arethuza »

vidarh wrote: post #112
hobs wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's not just negotiating power, but that they're actually allowed to negotiate . E.g. Medicare has a substantially higher demand for drugs than most single payer universal healthcare systems due to a combination of number of people covered plus covering mostly older, more expensive, patients. It's larger than the UK's NHS for example. But Medicare is subject to various legal restrictions on their ability to negotiat…

Why would any government legislate to prevent a government run medical provider from negotiating with suppliers?

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

#175

Post by renewiltord »

rscho wrote: post #99
causi wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little skeptical that there are legitimately 250k that result in unnecessary death each year From purely anecdotal experience, that number is totally believable. Again anecdotally, the medical field seems to only have two kinds of people, the extraordinarily competent and dedicated, and people who don't give a whiff of a shit. The medical bell curve looks more like a bathtub.

I gather you are not a healthcare professional, hence the artificial dichotomy stemming from your perception as an outsider. Medical competency is very difficult to assess objectively. You're good/bad because people say so. There isn't any form of performance feedback.

There are lots of reasons why it is not easy to determine surgeon performance but it's not impossible.

I'll let you make some quick inferences using this video https://www.nejm.org/do/10.1056/NEJMdo004274/full/?requestTy... from this paper https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1300625

Crucially, if you can get someone to hide which surgeon is skillful and which one is not and view the video and judge for yourself, you might be surprised at your skill in differentiation. In my experience, my friends have 100% guessed which surgeon is better correctly. So it is possible that this is Sorites-style.

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

#176

Post by ren_engineer »

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…

>That's because they're hard to standardize

there's a 4X difference between good surgeons and bad surgeons in terms of bad outcomes or complications. And the same study shows that surgeons are actually accurate in terms of assessing who is good and bad but there's really no way for patients to find out before surgery

https://twitter.com/emollick/status/1520589431861878786

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

#177

Post by rscho »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #152
nradov wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't even know what all the factors are, and we don't have a practical or affordable way to gather and record all that data in a high-quality, consistent manner.

So we don't even start to try? That's not a good enough reason. Given the social and financial magnitude the excuse is nearly criminal.

We do try. But what we've got is not nearly good enough. You underestimate the messiness and overestimate the information retrieval capabilities of healthcare systems.

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

#178

Post by anamexis »

q1w2 wrote: post #98
anamexis wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see them referring to doctors as such.

Who do you think is making the majority of these diagnostic errors?

It wasn’t in question who was making them, it’s who would be responsible for reporting them.

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

#179

Post by rscho »

renewiltord wrote: post #175
rscho wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gather you are not a healthcare professional, hence the artificial dichotomy stemming from your perception as an outsider. Medical competency is very difficult to assess objectively. You're good/bad because people say so. There isn't any form of performance feedback.

There are lots of reasons why it is not easy to determine surgeon performance but it's not impossible. I'll let you make some quick inferences using this video https://www.nejm.org/do/10.1056/NEJMdo004274/full/?requestTy... from this paper https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1300625 Crucially, if you can get someone to hide which surgeon is skillful and which one is not and view the video and judge for yourse…

From everyday work experience, I strongly believe people to be totally unable to fairly assess a surgeon in an everyday clinical context. Looks, manners and personal sympathies are the main drivers for that kind of judgment.

I know a surgeon with a substantial rate of spectacular failure and a very bad reputation. But most of the time, outcomes are excellent. Is that a bad surgeon on average? No idea. And Im in the OR every day.

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

#180

Post by montjoy »

pdpi wrote: post #118

An important factor to consider any time you see really worrisome things like medical errors or suicide as leading causes of death: counter-intuitively, that can be good news. Every time you solve your #1 highest priority problem, your #2 becomes your new #1. At some point, if you have good-enough solution for a broad-enough range of problems, the only option left is that your biggest problem is now failing to apply…

Definitely. The important thing is to not hide the facts. In a counter example sometimes a botched procedure can lead to suicide (if the person is in too much pain for example). That should probably count as a fatal medical error but I doubt it would be counted as such.
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