Yes, I only accepted Mike's numbers at face value. It doesn't matter if it were 200, 200 thousand, or 200 million - that wasn't relevant to the point I was arguing. But after doing a little digging, I think 200,000 is overblown.

As Harry pointed out, the Scientific American Article that Mike is citing, is based on a Hearst "investigation", which is based primarily on a 1999 Institute of Medicine Report, "To Err is Human." Harry correctly pointed out that the IOM report says, "at least 44,000 people, and perhaps as many as 98,000 people, die in hospitals each year as a result of medical errors," which is a substantial range of uncertainty. The Hearst story only reports the worst case scenario, 98,000 medical errors - and then adds 99,000 deaths due hospital-acquired infection from a CDC report.

Another report from the same time also suggests that 98,000 medical errors is an over-estimate.
From, Starfield, B. 2000. "Medical Errors - A Leading Cause of Death." The Journal of the American Medical Association 284(4):
2000 deaths/year from unnecessary surgery;
7000 deaths/year from medication errors in hospitals;
20,000 deaths/year from other errors in hospitals;
80,000 deaths/year from infections in hospitals;
106,000 deaths/year from non-error, adverse effects of medications

The Hearst investigation was doing a followup ten years after the IOM report, but it appears that they only report the worst case figures from 1999, and don't provide any new evidence. I see anecdotal accounts of things being worse than ten years ago, but no new numbers to back that up. If Hearst did an actual study or survey, they don't provide those results.


Also, Mike's Sat Feb 12, 2011 6:47pm assertion that there is "a One in Two Hundred chance of being killed" in the medical system is simply incorrect. If you use his 200K deaths and the CDC hospital discharges I provided earlier - 200,000:225,300,000 does not equal 1:200. Not even close. More importantly, the IOM report also says the errors occur not only in hospitals but in other health care settings, such as physicians' offices, nursing homes, pharmacies, urgent care centers, and care delivered in the home.
So, per year:
225 million are treated at the hospital
1.4 million live in nursing homes
1.5 million receive in-home care
994 million doctor office visits
3,679 million prescriptions are filled.
That totals 4,901.2 million interactions with the medical system (not including urgent care centers). And from that, a worst case estimate of 98,000 deaths due to error = 1:50000 chance of dying from a medical error.

And that doesn't even consider the fact that so many people seeing their doctor, admitted to a hospital or filling a prescription do so because their life is in danger to begin with. How many people would die if they refused treatment because they feared a medical error (and/or infection)? How many people would have died from their ailment even if no error occurred? Unanswerable questions, but it helps put the risk into context.

LOL! Like that say, "Statistics don't lie...but...."

Where you went wrong is in changing the goal posts and ignoring that we were talking about In Patient treatment, i.e., "going into" the hospital.

No. We were NOT talking about inpatient treatments only. We were talking about people who receive care at the hospital.

You calculated 1:200 based on inpatient admissions only. Which is incorrect. Hospital care includes inpatient, outpatient and ER visits - totalling 225 million.

Then I went and found that the IOM medical error study also includes non-hospital medical errors. So I expanded my numbers to include those sources - over 5 billion.

Your overinflated 200,000 applies to ALL sources (inpatient, outpatient, er, ucc, Rx, office visits, nursing homes and in-home care) not just inpatient care. If you insist on using the 200,000 deaths but only look at inpatient care, you are not comparing apples to apples.

Go back and answer the questions, little boy.

I think "the system" (i.e. the US medical system) is very good with noted drawbacks (two of which being the 200K deaths from medical mistakes and unequal access to the healthcare system).

Good point.

MORE deaths...

A drop in the buckett, stasitically.

This thread is really getting silly of course. It's difficult to criticize medical science in this case since those people did not have access to it. The study indicates that had those 45,000 people had access to medical facilities, they would probably be alive today. And that's per year. These deaths are a consequence of the poor state of healthcare availability in the US (per 2009).



Anything not to hurt the bottom line, right? Profits are more important to people to you now?

If only Mike would actually read my posts before spouting off.

the 45,000 dead per year is no big deal compared to the MILLIONS who DO get care

Wha?

Well, if you didn't quote mine, you might get it!

Henry says the 200,000 dead each year from Medical Malpractive is just a samll number compared to the MILLIONS who do get health care.

So the 45,000 dead is just a small number compared to the MILLIONS who DO have insurance.

Hence, no big deal.

It is unclear what you are arguing for in this thread. From what I can make out, the "very good" quote refers to medical science. Meaning, the scientific method enables us to improve medicine over time. You appear to be attacking politics, not science.