Reasons Why Many Hospital Patients Die
AnnuallyHospital Deaths and
Medical Errors OUTCRY
Magazine
The report which came out in late November, 1999 regarding 98,000 hospitalized
patients died each year in the Unites States due to errors was very shocking, but was not
unexpected. According to the report by the Institute of Medicine, many of the mistakes
were due to "basic flaws in hospital operational system." For example doctors
poor handwriting was one of the problems cited resulting in some patients' death due to
the dispensation of the wrong medication or wrong dose.
Although the report is applauded for exposing serious problems in hospital
operation which is far more than physicians bad hand writing, but was inaccurate in some
other ways. Contrary to what was said regarding health care being behind regarding
advancement in technology, health care had led the way in computerization of hospital
system and utilization of complex diagnostic machines even before Internet was born. What
went wrong was more than just bad physician's handwriting. Full Story
