More Medical Malpractice Occurs Than Previously Reported

There has been widespread claims by politicians and the healthcare community that there is a medical malpractice lawsuit crisis.  Some new studies prove that the crisis is that medical malpractice occurs much more often than ever believed previously.  On January 9, 2012, the Inspector General of the United States Department of Health and Human Services determined that more than 80% of medical errors occuring in hospitals go unreported.  Those medical errors include the wrong drug being given to patients, hospital-acquired infections, as well as deaths caused by hospital errors.  So, 80% of hospital errors go unreported!  Thus, 80% of the patients that are the victims hospital errors are never told.  If they are never told, you can assume that most of those patients never gile a medical malpractice lawsuit.  So, where is the crisis?

The Center for Disease Control reports that nearly 100,000 people die each year from hospital-acquired infections alone!  That is the crisis.  Those studies are not alone.  In April, 2011 a study published in Health Affairs shows that as many as 1/3 of hospital visits leads to hospital-related injuries.  In other words, one out of every three times a hospital is visited by a patient, a hospital-related injury will occur on a patient-- 1 in 3!!! That means that if you, your spouse and your child are involved in an automobile accident and are taken to the hospital, you can expect that at least one of you will suffer a hospital-related injury.  Where is the crisis?  It is clear that the crisis doesn't occur in the courthouse.  The crisis is the fact that preventable injuries are occurring at an alarming rate in our hospitals.  We should not be trying to change our laws to prevent innocent injured victims of hospital errors from going to court to seek compensation for those injuries.  We should be looking at ways to prevent those avoidable injuries in hospitals.  If that happens, there would be no lawsuit and no innocent injured victim.  I think we now know where the true crisis is.