1. Is there a metric similar to deaths per passenger mile in automobiles? That is, is it possible that more people go and stay at the hospital, more new kinds of diseases (which were considered incurable previously) are now being treated, even if people know it is some what futile? How much of the jump would it explain? How about the increase in the population itself?
2. From the word "now", we could infer a couple of things. It is possible that medical error itself has risen drastically (or not, depending on whether we have a good answer for 1), or just that treatment for whatever used to be number 3 previously - respiratory disease - has improved in recent times? It is entirely possible that medical error could climb further up and top this chart and still allow the possibility that medical care is actually improving.
3. From the article:
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Although all providers extol patient safety and highlight the various safety committees and protocols they have in place, few provide the public with specifics on actual cases of harm due to mistakes. Moreover, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t require reporting of errors in the data it collects about deaths through billing codes, making it hard to see what’s going on at the national level.
"The CDC should update its vital statistics reporting requirements so that physicians must report whether there was any error that led to a preventable death, Makary said.
“We all know how common it is,” he said. “We also know how infrequently it’s openly discussed.”
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There was a similar discussion a while back, about the topic of the coding of the cause of disease not being consistent and that it could be misreported. Before that situation is improved, shouldn't we be considering these kinds of articles from a more skeptical viewpoint?
1. Is there a metric similar to deaths per passenger mile in automobiles? That is, is it possible that more people go and stay at the hospital, more new kinds of diseases (which were considered incurable previously) are now being treated, even if people know it is some what futile? How much of the jump would it explain? How about the increase in the population itself?
2. From the word "now", we could infer a couple of things. It is possible that medical error itself has risen drastically (or not, depending on whether we have a good answer for 1), or just that treatment for whatever used to be number 3 previously - respiratory disease - has improved in recent times? It is entirely possible that medical error could climb further up and top this chart and still allow the possibility that medical care is actually improving.
3. From the article:
---------
Although all providers extol patient safety and highlight the various safety committees and protocols they have in place, few provide the public with specifics on actual cases of harm due to mistakes. Moreover, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t require reporting of errors in the data it collects about deaths through billing codes, making it hard to see what’s going on at the national level.
"The CDC should update its vital statistics reporting requirements so that physicians must report whether there was any error that led to a preventable death, Makary said.
“We all know how common it is,” he said. “We also know how infrequently it’s openly discussed.”
---------
There was a similar discussion a while back, about the topic of the coding of the cause of disease not being consistent and that it could be misreported. Before that situation is improved, shouldn't we be considering these kinds of articles from a more skeptical viewpoint?