Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Killers in Lab Coats

Medical Mistakes Kill 100,000+ Americans A Year

If a Jumbo Jet crashed and killed 280 people everyday.. 365 days a year.. year after year.. would you be concerned about flying?? Would you question the Federal Aviation Administration? Would you demand answers?? Think about it .. close to 100,000 people dying every year from plane crashes. Sounds Ridiculous??!!

Well think again.. what if you were told that over 100,000 people are killed and over 2 million people maimed and disabled every year .. year after year from modern medicine.. would you believe it??

....
That number of deaths is the equivalent of what would occur if a jumbo jet crashed every day; it is three times the 43,000 people killed each year in U.S. automobile accidents.

"It's by far the number one problem" in health care, said Leape, an adjunct professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health.

In their study, Leape and his colleagues examined patient records at hospitals throughout the state of New York. Their 1991 report found that one of every 200 patients admitted to a hospital died as a result of a hospital error.

Researchers such as Leape say that not only are medical errors not reported to the public, but those reported to hospital authorities represent roughly 5 to 10 percent of the number of actual medical mistakes at a typical hospital.

"The bottom line is we have a system that is terribly out of control," said Robert Brook, a professor of medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles. "It's really a joke to worry about the occasional plane that goes down when we have thousands of people who are killed in hospitals every year."