When patients are harmed by medical care, the traditional response of health systems is to “deny and defend.”
Hospitals deny they are responsible for the harm, and when pressed, they defend their providers’ conduct throughout a protracted and arduous legal process. According to a recent issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, hospital administrators say that this approach minimizes their liability.
Every day in every hospital in America, health professionals make mistakes that harm patients. The frequently cited estimate from the Institute of Medicine’s 1999 report on medical error was that 98,000 Americans die each year from medical errors. A 2013 estimate from the Journal of Patient Safety put the number of deaths due to preventable harm at 400,000, with perhaps 10-20 times more people being seriously but not fatally harmed.
A 2010 study in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that American hospitals are not getting safer, and one of the main obstacles to improvement is the lack of transparency promoted by this “deny and defend” mindset.
Just a thought, but people like to blame attorney’s for everything. Frivolous lawsuits, lack of lawsuits, unable to claim a lawsuit. Just as in any other profession there are good and bad attorney’s. We like to say that attorney’s who work for hospitals, big companies, insurance companies, lobbyists, Big Pharma, etc., work for the Dark Side. Also, blame legislators, because they are the ones who make the laws that limit pain and suffering and keep people from their right to sue. It’s the little attorney, which make up 90% of all attorney’s who are fighting for the people. If it weren’t for lawsuits, things wouldn’t change. Why would they have to, if no one spoke up, and stopped them from former practices? Most attorney’s are on the people’s side, not the big companies.
Funny, opioid drug abuse is at “epidemic” levels when over 16,000 people die a year from overdoses, but when we’re talking about people dying from medical mistakes at the statistics cited? How come that’s not an epidemic? Because the DEA and the media aren’t involved?
Just like DEA agents, doctors usually get immunity for their fatal mistakes. You can blame attorneys if you want, but it is only the legal system that will help chronic pain patients now.
I mean, look at all the powerful agencies and experts against us. It will probably take a class action lawsuit from patients before anything even begins to change. And while that will take a really long time, if it doesn’t happen at all, then everything is bound to just get worse.