A recent op-ed in the Orange County Register, by Joel Hay, a profession at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, outlines the dismal history of care in U.S. hospitals.
Find the article here: [What’s wrong with American hospitals?][1]
He states that a recent study now indicates that as many as 440,000 people die each year from preventable hospital errors. This is the equivalent of two daily jumbo jet crashes. Hospitals have risen from the sixth- to the third-leading cause of death in the U.S.! The phrase “preventable error” does not mean the same as “medical malpractice,” but many of those errors probably do occur because of substandard care. There is no outrage expressed in the media, and certainly not in Congress, about this phenomenon. Instead, some in Congress argue that erecting barriers to medical malpractice cases would actually lower healthcare costs.
Professor Hay also points out that hospitals do not have a financial incentive to give better or less-expensive care. In fact, the average hospital netted a median profit of $18,900 per surgery, but when complications arise the hospital’s average profit rises to $49,400. If the patient was covered by Medicare, the profit increase was doubled, and if the patient had private insurance it tripled.
He does not imply that there is intentional bad care to increase profits, but he contends that the financial incentives should be reversed, to reward better care. “Since hospitals and their CEOs are financially rewarded for providing poor quality and expensive care, it is not surprising that they do just that.”
There is no doubt that hospital malpractice is a leading cause of deaths in the U.S. Only a small percentage of those cases result in a medical malpractice lawsuit. Reducing the number of lawsuits would restrict one of the few ways in which a patient or a patient’s family can not only obtain compensation but also achieve some accountability for the mistakes that were made. Without such accountability, the incentives for bad care will continue.
[1]: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/hospital-600886-care-year.html “What’s wrong with American hospitals?”
