Prepare to Defend Yourself ... How to Navigate the Healthcare System and Escape with Your Life

Chapter 7. Medical Mistakes: To Err Is Human, but You Still Need a Lawyer

C H A P T E R 7 MEDICAL MISTAKES TO ERR IS HUMAN, BUT YOU STILL NEED A LAWYER MEDICAL MISTAKES 159 R ecently there has been a lot of discussion about the preponderance of medical mistakes and the danger to the public. The Institute of Medicine’s (IOM; part of the National Academy of Sciences) seminal study of preventable medical errors in 2004 estimated that 44,000 to 98,000 people are disabled, maimed, and die annually as a result of medical mistakes, at a cost of $29 billion. If the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were to include preventable medical errors as a category, these conclusions would make it the sixth leading cause of death in America. Further research has confirmed the extent of medical errors. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that 181,000 severe injuries were attributable to medical negligence in 2003. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement estimates there are 15 million incidents of medical harm each year. HealthGrades, the nation’s leading healthcare rating organization , found that Medicare patients who experienced a patient-safety incident had a one-in-five chance of dying as a result. In the decade since the IOM first reported its findings about patient safety in American hospitals, many proposals for improvement have been discussed and implemented, yet the numbers do not show a significant decline. Recent research indicates that much still needs to be done. Researchers at the Harvard School of Medicine have found that even today, about 18 percent of patients in hospitals are injured during the course of their care, and many of those injuries are life threatening or even fatal. The Office of the Inspector General of the US Department of Health and Human Services found that one in seven Medicare patients is injured during hospital stays and that adverse events during the course of care contribute to the deaths of 180,000 patients every year. Even errors that the government and private health insurers have classified as “never events,” events that should never happen in a hospital, are occurring at alarming rates. Recently the Joint Commission Center on Transforming Healthcare reported that as many as 40 wrong-site, wrongside , and wrong-patient procedures happen every week in the United States. Similarly, researchers in Colorado recently found that surgical “never” events are occurring all too frequently. Despite these numbers, much of the American public remains unaware of just how pervasive the problem is. In some cases we may think the 160 CHAPTER 7 issues we experience are acceptable freak occurrences in patient experience , or because for the most part we want to like the people taking care of us when we are hurt and ill, we don’t want to critically evaluate our caregivers. Or we may not be informed enough to know when a mistake has been made. In part, the value of this book is to make you a better consumer, a better self-advocate and partner in your own care. Again, this new informed awareness is not to create a contentious dynamic between you and a caregiver; it is to help you protect yourself and your loved ones. It is to help you navigate the healthcare environment and escape with your life, and the quality of your life intact. In considering medical mistakes, it is important to recognize two distinct settings: the hospital or healthcare environment exclusively and those combined or hybrid environments of health care and the real world. This second environment is not included in the figures cited by the studies, so the full magnitude and prevalence of medical mistakes are not completely represented. While there is not a quantitative, definitive study addressing the hybridized environments of EMS, home health, and convalescent care and, considering the lack of many of the controls enjoyed in these environments , the numbers of medical mistakes in America may actually be much, much higher. In a study performed at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, investigators attempted to measure EMS safety culture by surveying emergency medical technicians and paramedics at 21 US agencies. They used a scientifically validated survey that collected EMS worker opinions regarding six key areas: safety climate, teamwork climate, perceptions of management , working conditions, stress recognition, and job satisfaction. Safety outcomes were measured through a survey designed by EMS physician medical directors and investigators focusing on prehospital care-provider injuries, patient-care errors, and safety-compromising behavior. The analysis of...