Last week we discussed John T James’ study that he claims shows 400 thousand
American Hospital inpatients die of preventable event.
Dr. James claimed that he uses a good tool to determine preventable (negligent) deaths, the Global trigger that records abnormal events or lab work. Doing a meta analysis of four studies done in the past 6 years he estimates 400,000 hospital preventable/negligence deaths a year.
http://journals.lww.com/journalpatientsafety/Fulltext/2013/09000/A_New,_Evidence_based_Estimate_of_Patient_Harms.2.aspx#
Annual deaths in America are listed and categorized for the US here:
The total deaths annually are 2,400,000
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Causes_of_Death#sthash.k3ag2jDk.dpbs
Of those, 715,000 were deaths in the hospital. Average age at death in the hospital 72 -73 over the past 10 years.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db118.htm
Now let’s consider. Dr. James says 57% of all hospital deaths in America are preventable???
Now do you wonder how it is that people get published–well a patient safety journal loves somebody like Dr. James. He makes headlines with data torturing. I might politely say that his claims have little to recommend them.
Recall that the big patient safety studies also had their problems as admitted by the leader of the Harvard group.
Troyen Brennan M.D., J.D. — a lead Harvard researcher on the two studies that were the backbone of the IOM report and the source of the negligence death numbers that scared so many — asserted in an essay (April 13 2000) in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) that the research of the Harvard group was weak and was being misused by the IOM.
Brennan wrote:
–”I have cautioned against drawing conclusions about the numbers of deaths in these studies.”
–”The ability of identifying errors is methodologically suspect.”
–”In both studies (New York and Utah/Colorado) we agreed among ourselves about whether events should be classified as preventable…these decisions do not necessarily reflect the views of the average physician, and certainly don’t mean that all preventable adverse events were blunders.”
Outcome bias drives these studies, when a patient dies there is a tendency to find fault. Sometimes the patient dies because they are very old and terminally ill. When they are dying things that appear to be fixable go wrong. Desk review of the chart may not be adequate to determine if the death was preventable or the result of negligence.
Imagine how the numbers will swell if selective withdrawal of treatment is encouraged.
You are making claims that have no connection to reality. 100,000 lives lost for lack of Beta blocker?
First of all you are not a physician, you are a clip board guy with no clue.
Get a life–patient safety expert.
You missed a key point. I never said that the lethal preventable adverse events led to death hospitalized. For example, many hospital acquired infections kill after hospital discharge. I pointed out that errors of omission are important. For example in the year of the IOM report, approximately 100,000 people were dying early because they were not receiving beta-blockers, which were demonstrated effective in 1982. No doubt many of these were hospitalized for heart failure, but died outside the hospital. Before you call someone’s science “junK” you might try talking to them first.
Meta-analysis produces meta-medicine, which is about as closely related to medicine as meta-physics is to physics.
Imagine how the numbers will swell if selective withdrawal of treatment is encouraged.
Ooooh, good one. Do you think the PTB will actually end up re-defining the term “preventable deaths” if the deliberate withdrawal of treatment is found routinely to result in death? And what about ‘treatments’ which might hasten the process, such as euthanasia or pregnancy termination / infanticide?
Perhaps just a re-write of the term “death?”
This sounds like a job for the Ministry of Truth.