Any statistic can lie, but this one is even more susceptible considering that vague definition of what constitutes a "medical error". I remember looking at this study when it was first published (there should be a 2016 in the title by the way) and it basically attributed any action by a doctor that resulted in a negative outcome as a medical error. For example, that could include a doctor prescribing a treatment that is successful for 99.9999% of patients, but if it fails for that one patient it would be an error.
Meds aren't always so black and white. A treatment or drug may be successful in 70% of patients (or even 10%), and still properly prescribed when the potential harms outweigh the benefit.
Indeed. However, there are massive monetary incentives and influences to perscribe treatment even though the risk/benefit ratio may not be in the patient's favor.
You are focusing on the admittedly extreme outlier example I used. Let me try a different example. The 5 year survival rate for lung cancer is roughly 50%. The other 50% were likely given some treatment that was hoped to be effective but still resulted in death. Are those failures to successfully treat the patient a medical error?
Gonna post before reading (mistake alert), but was just reading The Patient's Playbook by Leslie Michelson and it begins by talking about what a clustercuss the US healthcare system is.
You'd think your primary care physician would know what medications you are on, and what specialists you'd seen, but they don't work like that unless you laboriously tell them everything you received when they weren't staring at you. It's inefficient to say the least. And it's borderline negligent too.
Its not mentioned in the article but almost all the doctors I have spoken to seem to have needed to do ridiculous shifts as junior doctors straight out of university. You are doing a highly skilled job under extreme conditions. Most say they get used to it, but still, it doesn't sound like the best idea.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 34.2 ms ] threadExcessive medical care is why the upper middle class have longer life expectancies than the super wealthy.
>could include a doctor prescribing a treatment that is successful for 99.9999% of patients
Sure it could, but that is an edge case that would account for a negligible number of deaths in relation to the sum total.
Dr Harry Persaud of Ohio made more than $7m from health insurance fraud while abusing patients’ ‘sacred trust’, says FBI
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/22/doctor-who-o...
Moreland Hills doctors performed unnecessary tests, illegally prescribed drugs, feds say
http://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/index.ssf/2018/01/mor...
The $395 billion US pharmaceutical industry spent $5.2 billion on advertising prescription drugs directly to consumers in 2015
Every $1.00 spent advertising prescription drugs is estimated to increase their retail sales by $4.20
https://prescriptiondrugs.procon.org
Doctors received more than $46 million from drug companies marketing opioids
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/08/0...
You'd think your primary care physician would know what medications you are on, and what specialists you'd seen, but they don't work like that unless you laboriously tell them everything you received when they weren't staring at you. It's inefficient to say the least. And it's borderline negligent too.