The unfortunate truth about medical errors is that they plague
the poor and uninsured, reflecting the great medical inequality
in our country. For those who do not consider medical errors to
be a problem, consider this: medical errors kill between 44,000
and 98,000 Americans every year. This reflects the fact that
medical errors kill more people per year than breast cancer,
AIDS, or motor vehicle accidents. Doctors complain of inflated
medical malpractice insurace costs, but medication-related
errors for hospitalized patients cost around $2 billion annually.
The 41 million uninsured Americans exhibit consistently worse
clinical outcomes than insured patients with the same maladies
and are at increased risk for dying prematurely. Only 55% of
patients in a recent random sample of adults received
recommended care in treatments and preventative treatments, and
the lag between the discovery of a new medicine and its adoption
by doctors is 17 years. You could suffer from an ailment and not
receive the proper treatment simply because your doctor is not
well educated about treatments that were invented almost two
decades ago!
The problem is not restricted to administering too little
medication. Every year millions of people are unnecessarily
hospitalized. Using excessive, unnecessary antibiotics to kill
infections outright is a widespread practice that, while curing
individual patients, cause strains of a disease to mutate and
grow stronger, resulting in more serious infections for the
entire population. In 1993, excessive antibiotics were
prescribed in 20 million cases, and by now that number has
multiplied.
Adverse drug reactions, procedural errors, and nosocomial
infections are all aspects of medical error. Surveys have found
that medical error is the norm in many instances. Medical error
actually occurs in the majority of patients suffering from
diabetes, hypertension, tobacco addiction, hyperlipidemia,
congestive heart failure, asthma, depression, and atrial
fibrillation. If you have any reason to believe that your
doctors have administered an inappropriate treatment, prescribed
unnecessary hospitalization, or otherwise jeopardized your
wellbeing, consult a lawyer right away. GA
If you have more questions, contact a
target=_new>medical error
attorney or read about other medical
malpractice cases at http://www.hugesettlements.com. If you
use this article, please include these links.
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