Mr. Quaid takes issue with the secrecy and lack of transparency when it comes to medical mistakes.  He states:

“When a crash happens, it’s so public,” he said. “No one is going to fly on their airplanes unless they have that trust.  But when a mistake occurs in a hospital, the public might never hear about it. Although an estimated 100,000 Americans die each year because of medical errors, their deaths are scattered over thousands of hospitals, “where people die anyway,” Quaid said. “It doesn’t get the same type of attention.”

 Mr. Quaid understands the problem when it comes to medical errors.  In my practice, we receive dozens of calls every month from medical malpractice victims who are not fully informed of what actually happened, and why the error was committed in the first place.

What is so disturbing is that medical errors kill 100,000 people every year — more than the number of people killed every year in car accidents.  But the public doesn’t know about it.  Many of these victims and/or their families have no idea that an error was committed. 

I admire Mr. Quaid’s efforts to raise awareness about the prevalence of medical errors and the number of deaths that these errors cause every year.  I hope it pays off.

The article states that 98,000 people die every year from medical mistakes.  This is more than the number of people killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.  Also, more than 99,000 patients succumb to hospital-acquired infections, and most of these deaths are clearly preventable.

Hearst reports that there is a prevalent “veil of secrecy” among hospitals when it comes to reporting the mistakes and the circumstances surrounding the preventable deaths of patients.   It appears that among states that are participating in healthcare safety campaigns, just 20% of the hospitals in these areas are participating.  You would think that the medical mistake-death statistics would provide some incentive for most if not all of these hospitals to participate in a campaign designed to reduce mistakes and prevent unnecessary mistaks.

The case of Michael Blankenship

A 15-year old boy sought dental treatment at the dental clinic of a well-known and highly respected hospital that specializes in treating children.  Michael Blankenship had autism, but he received regular treatment at this hospital.

When Michael was discharged the hospital’s chief pediatric dentist made a fatal mistake.  She prescribed a Fentanyl “pain patch” because Michael’s mother informed the hospital that her son could not, or would not, ingest oral medication due to his autism.  This fact had also been recorded in Michael’s chart years earlier.

The dentist prescribed Fentanyl, a very potent narcotic that is designed to treat chronic pain patients.  According to the drug’s warning label, Fentanyl should never be prescribed to an opiate-naive patient like a young 15-year-old boy who had no history of using narcotic medication over a long period of time.  And the drug should never be used to treat acute pain, or pain following surgery on an as needed basis. 

But Michael’s dentist prescribed the highest dose available, and instructed mom to apply the patch later that evening.  Even the hospital’s head pharmacist failed to detect the mistake, and also told mom again that the prescription was accurate and the dose safe.

Michael’s mother did as instructed.  The next morning Michael was found dead in his room.  The Fentanyl patch delivered so much of the narcotic to Michael’s system that it caused respiratory arrest and this caused his death.  As you can imagine, Michael’s mother is devastated. 

The whole family is now suffering over what was a very preventable mistake.  It never should have happened had there been appropriate safeguards in place by the hospital. 

A dentist decided to prescribe a lethal dose of a narcotic that never should have been prescribed in the first place.  The dentist merely had to consult the Physician Desk Reference (a reference book that most physicians have in their office) to discover that there were at least 5 warning signs in Michael’s case which would have informed any reasonably competent doctor that the drug should not be used at all.

What can we do as a society to prevent medical mistakes?  The first order of business is to communicate how prevalent mistakes are in our hospitals today.  Yet the doctors and the state medical association consistently spout propaganda to deflect attention of these mind-numbing statistics by arguing that doctors should be immune from mistakes so lawyers can’t sue and obtain million dollar jury verdicts.

I’ve never seen a multi-million dollar verdict against a doctor or hospital that didn’t involve a horrible injury or the needless death of a patient.  When negligent physicians and hospitals maim and kill, they cause a substantial amount of suffering, pain, and usually an extensive neeed for future medical care.

Just a few years ago the Washington State Medical Association waged an aggressive campaign to limit damages recoverable in medical negligence cases.  The doctors argued that physicians were having to leave the state in record numbers because of outrageous insurance premiums.  The measure was soundly defeated by Washington citizens.  But word is that the WSMA is planning its next attack in the coming years.

The article by Hearst has again raised awareness of a problem that no one, not the local and national governments combined, has addressed through public attention and intelligent disclosure laws.  If hospitals were forced to report all incidences of negligence, then I believe more would be done to avoid the mistakes in the first place.  But the healthcare industry has continued to fight against reasonable reporting and disclosure laws.

These Unbelievable Medical Mistakes include: (1) a woman who receives the wrong sperm at a fertility clinic, (2) a young girl who received the wrong lungs and heart in a transplant procedure and then died, (3) the removal of a health testicle that resulted in a $200,000 settlement, (4) leaving a 13-inch metal retractor in a patient’s abdomen following surgery, (5) open heart surgery on the wrong patient, (6) performing surgery on the wrong side of a patient’s brain, for the third time that year, (7) a surgeon who amputated the wrong leg, (8) the removal of the wrong and healthy kidney by mistake, (9) performing painful surgery on a patient who was wide awake and then he later committed suicide, and (10) a bypass surgery on the wrong heart artery – the patient was comedian Dana Carvey.

These mistakes are certainly unbelievable and egregious.  But one study reported that 195,000 patients die each year in hospitals from medical mistakes.  Can you believe that?  195,000 people every year, just because a doctor or some healthcare professional made a mistake.  That is just plain scary.

In Washington, medical malpractice cases are complex, risky and expensive.  Most jurors will give a doctor the benefit of the doubt when it comes time to declaring whether that physician acted negligently or below the standard of care.  Usually a medical malpractice case has to involve pretty egregious conduct just because of the substantial risk and expense that these cases bring in the legal setting.

Washington state recently enacted a new law that requires a patient to give 90 days prior notice to the doctor or hospital about that person’s intention of filing a lawsuit.  Another requirement is that a Certificate of Merit must be filed in addition to the Complaint.  The Certificate of Merit must be signed by another doctor stating that the defendant doctor or hospital probably committed medical negligence or malpractice.  Yet, the law does not require a defendant doctor to file a Certificate when it comes to filing a defense or counterclaim.  Why not?  Good question.

In any event, the economics of medical negligence cases require that the patient suffer very serious injuries or death to make the case worthwhile to pursue in court.  A medical negligence lawyer can easily spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just in costs to pursue the claim. 

Although the tort reformers will want you to believe that there are thousands of frivolous lawsuits against doctors that are driving them away from the practice of medicine, this is just not true.  Think about it.  A frivolous lawsuit has no chance of winning, and no insurance company will pay money to settle a frivolous case.  Most reputable lawyers will not agree to advance hundreds of thousands of dollars to pursue a case unless the damages are substantial and there is a good chance of proving negligence against the doctor. 

That means lawyers who handle medical negligence cases will not accept one that is frivolous.  Why would a lawyer throw away thousands of dollars away on a frivolous case when there is little chance that the case would win?  It just doesn’t happen.