In 1999 The Institutes of Medicine released the landmark report “To Err is Human”
https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/9728/to-err-is-human-building-a-safer-health-system
Which reported an estimated 98,000 people die annually as a result of medical errors and set forth a national agenda to build a safer healthcare system.
In 2013, the Journal of Patient Safety published a report that estimates deaths from preventable harm to patients are 400,000 annually
https://journals.lww.com/journalpatientsafety/Fulltext/2013/09000/A_New,_Evidence_based_Estimate
_of_Patient_Harms.2.aspx
In 2016 Johns Hopkins estimated 250,000 deaths occur annually as a result of medical error, making it the third leading cause of death in the United States.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_suggests_medical_errors_now_third_le
ading_cause_of_death_in_the_us
We can’t define it because we don’t track or measure it, but by the best estimates we haven’t improved
conditions in 23 years.
Lori Nerbonne, a nurse from New Hampshire wants medical errors reported on death certificates. She’s been trying to make this happen for at least 17 years that I personally know of. This should be easy to do. 17 years and she’s still trying.
https://www.nepatientvoices.org/about-us/about-us2/
The patchwork of patient safety advocates span the country and have been working ten times as hard as
the healthcare industry to eradicate errors, for years.
I used to work in construction finance. If we caused damage to a person’s property in the course of trying to repair it, we got “backcharged.” We had to pay for the cost of the repair. We were incentivized to not cause damage.
When we are harmed by healthcare, nobody gets backcharged. The providers and hospitals earn more revenue by providing additional treatment to repair the damage they caused, if they didn’t kill us. Fines and sanctions are what we need. They need to start paying for their mistakes. There’s no accountability or oversight of the healthcare industry. The patient isn’t controlling the payment or the money. The patient isn’t the driver.
Can healthcare continue to exist as a profit-driven industry in a free market? If it were truly a free market, they can only charge what the market will bear. Take insurance companies out of the picture and the healthcare industry has to start competing for our business.