It turns out that it’s far safer to jump out of an airplane than to access healthcare in the U.S. According to recent study by Johns Hopkins, more than 250,000 people in the United States die every year due to medical mistakes, making it the third-leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.
While that number is staggering, other studies have reported numbers as high as 440,000. Such a discrepancy in numbers is due largely to the fact that the human errors and system failures involved are rarely noted on death certificates. However, those certificates are what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) rely on for the statistics on death they post nationwide.
According to Dr. Martin Makary of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and leading author of their recent study, the CDC’s current death collection system only tallies causes occurring from disease, morbid conditions and injuries. He defines a death due to medical error as one “caused by inadequately skilled staff, error in judgement, a system defect or a preventable adverse effect.”
In the case of three-year-old Emily Jerry, a pharmacy technician prepared her intravenous bag with more than 20 times the recommended dose of sodium chloride – a fatal mistake.
Amid a pandemic where healthcare workers have been touted as heroes, reports such as this can be a tough pill to swallow. Doctors are supposed to be the experts you can trust and while these frontline workers are heroic in their commitment to put the needs of others before their own, they are also human. That said, many including Makary, would argue that the system is the one at fault.
Despite various measures in place to improve patient safety like electronic records, fail-safe devices and awards for identifying potential or existing errors related to patients, complications occur.
The 2018 Netflix documentary The Bleeding Edge dove into the risks of the multibillion-dollar medical device industry, chronicling the lives of patients victimized by poor regulation, misleading marketing and a failure to properly educate physicians.
“There needs to be a balance between the provider community and the patients,” says Dr. John James, patient safety advocate and author. “It is not [currently] even a relationship at all.” And Dr. David Classen, Pascal Metrics’ chief medical information officer and University of Utah associate professor of medicine, agrees saying, “the system of care is fragmented.”
So, with a fragmented system of care that allows medical errors to become the third-leading cause of death nationwide, how can patients protect themselves?
By becoming empowered patients.
Ask questions about benefits, side effects and disadvantages of recommended medications or procedures.
Use social media to learn more about your condition, prescribed medications and procedures.
Seek a second opinion. A red flag is a doctor who discourages the patient from learning more.
Enlist an advocate to help process/understand the information given as well as ask the right questions.
Download an app to keep your medical information at hand and reduce the risk of errors.
Health Rosetta-Style Health Plans as a Cure
Imperative in the design of high-performing health plans is the alignment of objectives, transparency, and accountability to directly combat the dangers of accessing improper health care. The good news is that once the waste and abuse is eliminated, cost goes down for everyone and outcomes go up. As our founder has often said: "We offer solutions that allow employers to be excited about benefits for the first time. I like to think that a few years from now that will be the baseline expectation across the market."
