No: https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/02/10/medical-error-thi...
Authors can hum and haw over estimates all day, but at the end of the day if we don’t have required reporting we will never know. That would be a good first step.
Medical errors now third leading cause of death in United States (2016)
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Re: Medical errors now third leading cause of death in United States (2016)
#12I wonder how much of this is owed to the financialization of medicine where many patients especially in poorer areas are now not seeing a doctor but a 'nurse practitioner', where responsibilities are diffused by design.
My gut tells me it's mainly due to the patient-to-nurse/doctor ratio. Like how I manufacture bugs when being rushed through a sprint with to many "points" committed. If I can pay attention and think about the task at hand and see it through, my bugs reduce dramatically. On top of that the quality of the solution is much better.
Re: Medical errors now third leading cause of death in United States (2016)
#13My senior college project was to reduce surgeon error in an Opthamalogy department, and surgeons were definitely cagey about talking about errors. It happened to other surgeons but not them (but it did). They’re so scared of malpractice suits.
Cataract surgery is very quick, but apparently it does happen they will implant the wrong lens into the wrong eye.
The existing system at the time was a verbal one. Someone in the operating room would call out the lens model number, and the eye they were operating on, and everyone would confirm. The theory being safety in numbers. But they got it wrong sometimes.
So we suggested a barcode system, where the correct model is documented ahead of time. Then when the lens is picked for surgery, it would be scanned and the computer would say if it matches or not, and it would say which eye it was to be put in. There still could be error with data entry but it would be documented with clear ownership which should decrease error.
The interesting thing was in talking about the processes with surgeons, no one involved said errors ever happened there. Which makes sense - there’s only downside in doing so, but I can easily see why medical errors are hard to estimate.
Re: Medical errors now third leading cause of death in United States (2016)
#14But how many of these deaths matter? Did the doctors actually kill them, or did they fail to prolong their life another few days of misery?
This is a poorly written statement but the point is valid.
Above, another commenter linked an analysis that showed 2/3 of “preventable desths” occurred in patients with a life expectancy of 3 months and that only 1/3 of the preventable deaths were for people with a life expectancy greater than 3 months.
Re: Medical errors now third leading cause of death in United States (2016)
#15Using an analogy, let's all wave "Defund Healthcare" banners!