[Reader-list] Wrong medicine harms 1.5 m in US

[Isaac souweine]

Jeebesh:

Thank you for posting this. Over the past two years, my father has bravely
and successfully battled leukemia. Of the many things I did not know about
myself and the world before this experience, one of the most surprising was
the incredible vigilance that is required to successfully navigate a
high-tech allopathic medical system. Though medical technologies (radiation,
chemotherapy, stem cell transfusions) and skilled practitioners are
responsible for saving my dad, the quality of the care that he received is
directly correlated to his and my mother's willingness to ask questions,
offer up information and draw their own conclusions, which is to say, their
unwillingness to blindly trust a system that is deeply prone to error.

Best,
Isaac


On 7/26/06, Jeebesh Bagchi <jeebesh at sarai.net> wrote:
>
> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1794342.cms
>
> Wrong medicine harms 1.5 m in US
>
>   WASHINGTON: Medication errors harm 1.5 million people and kill
> several thousand each year in the US, costing the nation at least
> $3.5 billion annually, the Institute of Medicine concluded in a
> report released on Thursday.
>
> Drug errors are so widespread that hospital patients should expect to
> suffer one every day they remain hospitalised, although error rates
> vary by hospital and most do not lead to injury, the report concluded.
>
> The report, Preventing Medication Errors, cited the death of Betsy
> Lehman, a 39-year-old mother of two and a health reporter for The
> Boston Globe, as a classic fatal drug mix-up.
>
> Lehman died in 1993 after a doctor mistakenly gave her four times the
> appropriate dose of a toxic drug to treat her breast cancer.
>
> Recommendations to correct these problems include systemic changes
> like electronic prescribing and tips for patients to carry complete
> listings of their prescriptions to every doctor's visit, the report
> said.
>
> The incidence of medication errors was surprising even to us, said J
> Lyle Bootman, dean of the University of Arizona College of Pharmacy.
>
> The report is the fourth in a series done by the institute, the
> nation's most prestigious medical advisory organisation.
>
> The first report, To Err Is Human, was released in 1999 and caused a
> sensation when it estimated that medical errors of all sorts led to
> as many as 98,000 deaths each year -more than was caused by highway
> accidents and breast cancer combined.
>
> After the first report, health officials and hospital groups pledged
> reforms, but many of the most important efforts have been slow to
> take hold.
>
> Drug computer-entry systems, which are supposed to ensure hospital
> patients get the right drugs at the right dose, are used in just 6%
> of the nation's hospitals, said Charles B Inlander, president of the
> People's Medical Society, a
>
> consumer advocacy group, and an author of the report released
> Thursday. Electronic medical records can help ensure patients do not
> receive toxic drug combinations. The 1999 report urged widespread
> adoption of these systems.
>
> Thursday's report called for all prescriptions to be written
> electronically by 2010. Just 3% of hospitals have electronic patient
> records and few doctors prescribe drugs electronically.
>
> NYT News Service
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