I just went to a hearing at the State House on health care quality. Featured were three patients who have endured massive pain and suffering — and incurred massive expense — because of utterly preventable, lack-of-common-sense medical errors.
Ginny broke her ankle; got a staph infection at the hospital; was not given antibiotics for five weeks; 20+ surgeries later, she had to have her leg amputated.
I talked with Ginny afterward; she shows amazing resilience for someone who has really been through the wars. She told me that several doctors had told her to “stop counting” the number of surgeries. Got that?
Lisa was given a graver diagnosis than was warranted, and suffered terribly from an excess of treatment. And then the exact same wrong diagnosis was given to her daughter. Do no harm, indeed:
Linda's mom went in for a treatment, got dumped in a hospital ER for 24 hours, developed a hematoma that the staff ignored … and died. (link fixed)
Lest anyone think I'm “politicizing” these folks' suffering: They showed up at this hearing to do just that — to put their stories into the public arena. I talked to Ginny and Lisa personally, and both gave their enthusiastic blessing to the farthest possible dissemination of their videos. They want these stories told.
Now, if you use Jim Caralis's terrific OpenMass.org site, you may notice that the legislation intended to deal with these issues has been hung up since September. (S. 1277 and H. 2226 — see Health Care For All's summary here.) The legislation would require hospitals to disclose the frequency of hospital-acquired infections; “never-events” (i.e. egregious foul-ups that should never happen); and notably, allow that doctors' apologies for mistakes not be admissable as evidence against them in a malpractice lawsuit.
I think the public politics of this are a slam-dunk; I expect that hardly anyone in the general public would disagree with this rather modest and sensible agenda. However, the providers' groups tend to be stubborn and frankly arrogant; they don't like anyone else telling them how to do their job, and tend to resist any and all measures of public accountability. “Trust us.” I would guess that the public has lost its sense of worshipful deference to many institutions and professions, and that includes medicine. That's for the better.
It was good to see Sen. Moore of the Health Care Finance Committee taking part; I saw Carl Sciortino, and Pat Jehlen ducked in at one point. I'm told Susan Fargo's staff was there. Conspicuously absent was Rep. Peter Koutoujian — or apparently any of his staff. He's the Chair of the Joint Committee on Public Health; you think maybe he ought to take an interest in this stuff? Scratch that — two of his staffer were there. My apologies to all.
I know for certain that neither you nor anyone else in your family and more than likely no one you have ever known has worked in medicine.
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p>Medicine is a mess, because of a myriad of reasons, most prominent is the lack of COMPETENT providers.
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p>You as well as others are continuously beating the drum for healthcare for all and single payer healthcare. These efforts will grind a a staggering healthcare system to its knees and no one will have healthcare.
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p>Who do you think provides this care? Do you assume it is people who are receiving exhorbitant salaries with plenty of time off.
Most healthcare providers work many hours a week/month/year for zero compensation. They do it out of the goodness of their hearts and because it’s done out of kindness. Well you can’t pay your mortgage with kindness. The world (the real world) doesn’t work that way.
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p>Staph infections, medical errors, premature discharges. Get used to it. It’s going to get worse. Healthcare workers have a sword of Damocles over their heads that no one else is encumbered with. It’s called patient abandonnment. Once you have “accepted a patient, you won them body and soul. What are healthcare workers doing now to protect themselves: “Sorry, I’m not taking any more medicare/medicaid.” “Sorry, I’m not taking any ob/GYN.” “Sorry, no more geriatrics, no more peds. Healthcare workers are limiting the scope of practice and/or they are leaving medicine. I have no idea what the stats are but they must be significant. In one year, in a small SE Mass. locale, I personally know of two RN’s that have simply quit and one MD who has abonned her practice (and she is not even thrirty five years old)!.
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p>The answer is that we need more COMPETENT providers. I would venture to guess that there are 25% of providers that are simply incompetent or don’t give a crap. The other 25% are really marginal. The remaining 50% are OK to super Doc’s. A few years back, the state and Feds made noise about increasing the number of nurses. It went no where. Why? You are required to have a masters or a PhD to teach. No nurses want to teach. The money is lousy and the job is tedious. S0——the result is——no new nurses. I cannot speak for medical schools, but our medical schools are being flooded by foreign students whose GOVERNMENTS pay cash up front for room/board/tuition/fees.
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p>It may be nice to have a clue prior to launching into a diatribe about something very few know anything about. Until salaries amongst other things come into line with the time and effort to become a healthcare provider and an end to 12+ hour days, then you will continue to see a slow downward slide in our healthcare system, and the end result will be that only those who pay in cash will get outstanding care ( we are there already) The remainder of the folks will get just barely legal healthcare. No Thanks.
You start passing legislation knuckling physicians and you will see them leaving like lemming. The number of docs leaving New England for points west and south is an eye opener. As one doc in Houston who had left Boston two years prior to stated: “I didn’t leave because of the weather.”
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the first line is asinine.
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p>I’ll bet you he knows his own doctor. He might even be able to name the nurses, assistants, or others working in the office. He probably also knows his dentist and/or orthodontist. I’m sure you’ll agree that all of them work “in medicine.”
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p>That’s above and beyond any friends he might have who work in hospitals, clinics, infirmaries, ambulatory services, and so forth.
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p>So… I’m willing to bet ol’ Charley knows at least two people who currently work in medicine, but that the number is actually much much higher.
Frankly, with this post of yours, I find it hard to believe, especailly the first line, which shows total lack of sensitivity and understanding, imho. Our healthcare system has been on the decline for quite awhile, and has rapidly gotten worse under Dubya’s Administration. Hospitals, as well as the medical caretakers (i. e. Drs. and nurses, etc., ) are obligated to acknowledge their errors and accountability in these situations and do what they’re supposed to do to help prevent these situations. Maybe, just maybe the healthcare system needs to be fixed, more competent and sensitive medical caretakers be put into place, and hospital need to monitor their workers’ habits. Washing hands thoroughly with soap and water in between patients wouldn’t be a bad start towards solving these problems, and, fewer patients per workload would also prevent such outbreaks of staph infections and their resulting complications. Hospitals should also resume normal laundry service, as well as custodial and janitorial staff as well, instead of cutting down on such things, as many hospitals have done. The situation is a total disgrace.
About the hearing, or the bill, or anything. You didn’t watch, and you don’t particularly care about what I actually wrote. It’s just a chance for you to vent.
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p>Incompetent care is precisely what this is about. It’s about accountability and people taking responsibility for their own mistakes. It’s about improving quality so that as premium-payers we’re not all on the hook for these massive and completely avoidable bills.
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p>BTW, median nurse salary in the Boston area is around $68k. http://swz.salary.com/salarywi…
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p>We can talk about whether that’s adequate for the work and area, but it’s not poverty wages in any event.
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p>Never mind. You didn’t actually read the post. And I don’t think you’re actually in medicine, either.
Thanks for posting it and sharing it with us. Again, as has been pointed out, our healthcare system definitely is broken and has to be fixed before more situations like the ones that were heard about during the hearing that you recently attended arise. There are many, many more of them that go unreported or that people’re unaware of.
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p>Although I’m not an activist at all, I’ve done seemingly small things such as email and/or call my senators/congressmen/legislators, and signed petitions online to make my voice heard…and counted regarding this dire matter.
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p>Although this statement is really too ridiculous to respond to, I will anyway.
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p>1. How do you know “for certain” that no one in Charley’s family has “worked in medicine”?
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p>2. Why do you think it’s “more than likely” that no one Charley’s has ever known has “worked in medicine”?
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p>Obviously you don’t know much about working in “medicine” yourself:
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p>That’s a lot of people, not the small cadre of “workers” your ridiculous statement suggests. The likelihood that Charley knows, oh, I don’t know, I’m taking a stab in the dark here, say–more than one person who has “worked in medicine is quite high.
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p>Actually, I suspect Charley knows more about “working in medicine” than you, the Walter Mitty of BMG.
Apparently it was available twelve hours ago. Someone took action to have it removed?
There was a technical issue that caused the video to be taken down, but it is now back up and available at http://www.hcfama.org/quality/stories and on YouTube.
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p>Linda
It’s really unfortunate that there’s so little accountability on the part of many medical caretakers for errors, and so little effort to prevent them from happening in the first place. Also, hospital emergency rooms aren’t necessarily and always the safest places to be either. What should’ve been a routine procedure turned out to be a disaster. Let’s hope that more effort on the part of hospitals and their staff to openly and squarely face up to their accountability and culpability in preventable errors like this are made, and more lives saved. This is totally disgraceful, imo. This never should’ve happened. The trouble is that our present administration has created an atmosphere where complete and total disregard for human lives is rampant. Sad, sad, sad, indeed…and disgraceful.