Medical Errors: The 1 or 2 Leading Cause of Death in U.S.

While President Obama argues that lack of health insurance is a big problem in the U.S., no study has ever suggested that lack of health insurance contributes to more than 50,000 deaths in the U.S. each year. In contrast, Obama's own Department of Health and Human Services reported in 2010 that 180,000 Medicare patients die each year as a result of medical errors. In addition, the report found 1.6 million were harmed by medical errors each year. However, more recent research suggests the 180,000 deaths per year may be a gross underestimate and Medicaid patients may receive even lower quality care.

So far, the administration has largely ignored the problem as have past administrations even after after a 1999 study estimated that as many as 90,000 die each year from medical errors. Meanwhile a recent survey found 1 in 3 Americans believe they have been harmed by medical errors. U.S. life-expectancy is now ranked 50th in the world behind some third world countries.

My question is why? Why are the problems not addressed? Some argue that more handwashing and computerized pop-ups for high risk medications could resolve over 75% of the errors but the problem receives little attention 1 2.

Others argue the problem goes even deeper and claim that some are deliberately denied care. Another conspiracy is that physicians are overly influenced by pharmaceutical companies that pay them 760 million a year in the U.S. This theory notes that about half of all patients harmed were the result of medication errors and compared with most other countries Americans are over-medicated. Others argue that physicians lack sufficient resources for handling complex cases. Finally, others argue that the American medical system has a total cover-up mentality when it comes to incompetent health care professionals.

These research findings have been consistent and confirmed by many others.

So why do I claim that this means medical errors are a leading cause of death when government statistics don't even report it at all as a leading cause of death. Tobacco is estimated to cause about 460,000 deaths per year which is similar to what is estimated for medical errors in the total population.

I'm just wondering what everyone thinks about this.

People in the medical field are over worked and underpaid, Do you think they do this on purpose? No they do not.
They are as human as the rest of us and mistakes will be made.
Make sure the workers are well trained and not tired due to stupid shift patterns and the stats will improve.

I hate to be a pessimist, but I would suggest being prepared for more of it.

The health care plans coming into effect will put more people on Medicaid, and the AMA is reporting that they will have a shortfall of 96,000 doctors. Many of them are baby boomers reaching the retirement age. ER doctors and general practitoners will be in short supply as doctors enter into the more specialized fields. There is serious talk about using nurses for some of the care that doctors used to provide.

I pray we don't end up like England with their National Health Service.

reply to post by boymonkey74
The U.S. already pays twice as much for its health care as the rest of the world. For example, many other countries have Medicare but their higher quality Medicare costs half as much.

Why are US health care workers more tired and why do they perform less well than other countries?

Also, the data clearly show that the U.S. lowered life-expectancy is the result of lower quality care 1 2

I think the problem lays not only from over worked hours and big parma paying big bonuses, but rather the most important one in my opinion age, yup the age of these so called doctors these days is sad, I'd rather have an older doctor, one that has seen things and could diagnose you over the phone with said symptoms,

Student doctors should treat and only treat student doctors, let the pretending doctors do some work for a change.

reply to post by charles1952


The British have longer life-expectancies than Americans and this is a long term trend.
This entry contains the average number of years to be lived by a group of people born in the same year, if mortality at each age remains constant in the future. The entry includes total population as well as the male and female components. Life expectancy at birth is also a measure of overall quality of life in a country and summarizes the mortality at all ages. It can also be thought of as indicating the potential return on investment in human capital and is necessary for the calculation of various actuarial measures.
FROM THE CIA FACT BOOK
Rank country (years) Date of Information
1 Monaco 89.68 2012 est.
2 Macau 84.43 2012 est.
3 Japan 83.91 2012 est.
4 Singapore 83.75 2012 est.
5 San Marino 83.07 2012 est.
6 Andorra 82.50 2012 est.
7 Guernsey 82.24 2012 est.
8 Hong Kong 82.12 2012 est.
9 Australia 81.90 2012 est.
10 Italy 81.86 2012 est.
11 Liechtenstein
81.50 2012 est.
12 Canada 81.48 2012 est.
13 Jersey 81.47 2012 est.
14 France 81.46 2012 est.
15 Spain 81.27 2012 est.
16 Sweden 81.18 2012 est.
17 Switzerland 81.17 2012 est.
18 Israel 81.07 2012 est.
19 Iceland 81.00 2012 est.
20 Anguilla 80.98 2012 est.
21 Netherlands 80.91 2012 est.
22 Bermuda 80.82 2012 est.
23 Cayman
Islands 80.80 2012 est.
24 Isle of Man 80.76 2012 est.
25 New
Zealand 80.71 2012 est.
26 Ireland 80.32 2012 est.
27 Norway 80.32 2012 est.
28 Germany 80.19 2012 est.
29 Jordan 80.18 2012 est.
30 United
Kingdom 80.17 2012 est.
31 Greece 80.05 2012 est.
32 Saint Pierre
& Miquelon 80.00 2012 est.
33 Austria 79.91 2012 est.
34 Faroe
Islands 79.85 2012 est.
35 Malta 79.85 2012 est.
36 European
Union 79.76 2010 est.
37 Luxembourg 79.75 2012 est.
38 Belgium 79.65 2012 est.
39 Virgin
Islands 79.47 2012 est.
40 Finland 79.41 2012 est.
41 Korea,
South 79.30 2012 est.
42 Turks &
Caicos
Islands 79.26 2012 est.
43 Wallis &
Futuna 79.12 2012 est.
44 Puerto
Rico 79.07 2012 est.
45 Bosnia &
Herzegovina 78.96 2012 est.
46 Saint Helena,
Ascension &
Tristan da
Cunha 78.91 2012 est.
47 Gibraltar 78.83 2012 est.
48 Denmark 78.78 2012 est.
49 Portugal 78.70 2012 est.
50 Guam 78.50 2012 est.
51 US 78.49 2012 est.

reply to post by atopsecret

Dear atopsecret,

Those are very interesting numbers. How do you think they came to be that way? I suppose some of it is due to violent deaths and drug problems in the US, which aren't really health problems. Perhaps some could be accounted for by our infant deaths which are recorded as deaths at any time after the child is born. Some countries don't record it as a death until the child reaches a certain age. I seem to remember that one country, an extreme, waited until the child was two. After all, these numbers are what each country reports.

There are so many numbers it's hard, sometimes, to learn anything from them.

With respect,
Charles1952

OP, why don't you try to find out the statistics about how many people's live's have been saved, extended or changed for the better because of medicine?
Give a balanced view.

I am a new graduate RN. It's appalling to me how hospitals are alright with assigning 10 or more patients to one nurse. There is no way that a nurse is going to give exceptional care while trying to give medications to this many patients while going through all the safety checks before and during medication administration so that medication errors are not made on top of all the duties a nurse has. If blame is to be assessed ,start by pointing a finger at the insurance industry especially medicade and medicare who will only pay out a fraction of what the hospital charges for care, in other words, reimbursement by them back to the hospital isn't sufficient to cover the costs. Therefore the hospitals cut back on their biggest expense which is nursing care. I am scared to death to make a medication error and put a patient in danger of losing their life, I triple check orders and make sure assessments relative to the medication, like blood pressure checks before giving a patient blood pressure medication, are done before I give the medication, or triple check the drip rates on an IV line. Nurses have to prioritize and at least on my end, and I know its the priority for every nurse I know, safe medication administration is a top priority.

reply to post by charles1952
The numbers come from the CIA Factbook which uses numbers from both national and international organizations. Much of the data comes from the World Health Organization data so the data is uniform across countries. Everyone counts deaths at age 0 and beyond. For developed countries, OECD collects additional data and that's most countries listed so the data is fairly standardized.

It's noteworthy that data within U.S. counties shows big differences. If each U.S. county was treated as a country, rankings would range is from 2nd to 158th.

I think one should also consider that the spread from the top five countries to the bottom 5 countries is but a few percentage points. Even though the alarmist headline reads "US ranks 50 in life expectancy" the real story is that there is a spread of just a few years.

Secondly, correlation does not equal causation. It is a bit disingenuous to say that it is because we have a bad healthcare system ("bad" as defined by those who want socialized medicine) because many, many factors go into average life expectancy.

Since this is a conspiracy website, everytime this comes up the pattern seems to be that there is a corporate/pharma conspiracy. What if all of this information is just disinformation designed to have people beg for governmental takeover--kind of a conspiracy within a conspiracy? Eh?

Originally posted by boymonkey74
People in the medical field are over worked and underpaid, Do you think they do this on purpose? No they do not.
They are as human as the rest of us and mistakes will be made.
Make sure the workers are well trained and not tired due to stupid shift patterns and the stats will improve.

I use to work as a medical -icu floor nurse.

I quit and will never go back to that hell. The hospital I worked in had its nurses take up to 8 patients.

It was unsafe for both the patient and the staff but they didn't care as long as the profit margin was good...

Originally posted by justsaying
I am a new graduate RN. It's appalling to me how hospitals are alright with assigning 10 or more patients to one nurse. There is no way that a nurse is going to give exceptional care while trying to give medications to this many patients while going through all the safety checks before and during medication administration so that medication errors are not made on top of all the duties a nurse has. If blame is to be assessed ,start by pointing a finger at the insurance industry especially medicade and medicare who will only pay out a fraction of what the hospital charges for care, in other words, reimbursement by them back to the hospital isn't sufficient to cover the costs. Therefore the hospitals cut back on their biggest expense which is nursing care. I am scared to death to make a medication error and put a patient in danger of losing their life, I triple check orders and make sure assessments relative to the medication, like blood pressure checks before giving a patient blood pressure medication, are done before I give the medication, or triple check the drip rates on an IV line. Nurses have to prioritize and at least on my end, and I know its the priority for every nurse I know, safe medication administration is a top priority.

It is up to 10 now. WOW

When I quit the average was 8.

Appalling is correct.

In my state, a nurses union was tried 6 times but failed

This state has never been able to build a nurses union because the opposition wants to control the patient to nurse ratio ; pay and other things.

Nursing sucks ; get out of it now. You will be treated with disrespect no matter how hard you work.

You will never be paid what you are worth and everyday you walk into having to care for that many; you will risk loosing your license.

reply to post by boymonkey74


Nurses make $30+ bucks an hour. Underpaid my rear.

Originally posted by boymonkey74
People in the medical field are over worked and underpaid, Do you think they do this on purpose? No they do not.
They are as human as the rest of us and mistakes will be made.
Make sure the workers are well trained and not tired due to stupid shift patterns and the stats will improve.

wrong.

they are overpaid and underworked.

most of them are millionaires after 5 years and become very arrogant from all the kickbacks they get from big pharma for churning out their dangerous drugs.

Originally posted by beckybecky

Originally posted by boymonkey74
People in the medical field are over worked and underpaid, Do you think they do this on purpose? No they do not.
They are as human as the rest of us and mistakes will be made.
Make sure the workers are well trained and not tired due to stupid shift patterns and the stats will improve.

wrong.

they are overpaid and underworked.

most of them are millionaires after 5 years and become very arrogant from all the kickbacks they get from big pharma for churning out their dangerous drugs.

Typical response from someone who hasn't worked in the industry.

Granted, some people do make a fair bit of money out of it but like in every other industry in the world you'e looking at a minute percentage overall.
The vast, no overwhelming majority of health service workers are under immense pressure and the salaries they receive in no way reflect their hard work or dedication.

reply to post by NavyDoc


Personally, I believe a spread of 12 years is huge which is how much longer people on average live at the top of the list than the average life-expectancy in the U.S. and if you look at it on a county by county basis in the U.S. the spread is 25 years which seems like a very big number to me.

reply to post by atopsecret, and, actually, everyone else

Dear atopsecret,

I know your interested in life expectancy, causes of death, etc. May I suggest a site?

This is really impressive, good use of maps, colors interactive features, and current info. I'm going back to it.

www.worldlifeexpectancy.com...

With respect,
Charles1952

reply to post by atopsecret


I really flew through reading your original post this morning and after re reading just now it I have to say if we are ranked 50th in life expectancy, all anyone needs to do is go walk through an ICU and you will get your answer. The majority of patients are grossly obese and of which most are type 2 diabetics, with no hope to save their lives unless they change their lifestyle of sedentary living, over eating saturated processed foods and smoking. Walk down any metropolitan street for that matter and you can see the same thing. Call it too much of a good thing with our abundant food supply and cheap gas (as compared to other countries), the people in this country are killing themselves willingly and you can't blame that on government or conspiracies (but I know some on this site will!). Medication errors are but a small fraction of this problem.

Medicare patients in the US eh? Not the private insurance but the Gov insurance?

And this isn't euthanasia? AKA MURDER.

Oh Really?