ANSWER: 210,000 to 440,000 - 3rd leading cause of death in America
ProPublica, Sep. 19, 2013, 9:03 a.m.
by Marshall Allen
An updated estimate says at least 210,000 patients die from medical mistakes in U.S. hospitals a year. (File, Scott Olson/Getty Images)
It seems that every time researchers estimate how often a medical mistake contributes to a hospital patient’s death, the numbers come out worse. In 1999, the Institute of Medicine published the famous “To Err Is Human” report, which dropped a bombshell on the medical community by reporting that up to 98,000 people a year die because of mistakes in hospitals. The number was initially disputed, but is now widely accepted by doctors and hospital officials — and quoted ubiquitously in the media.
In 2010, the Office of Inspector General for Health and Human Services said that bad hospital care contributed to the deaths of 180,000 patients in Medicare alone in a given year.
Now comes a study in the current issue of the Journal of Patient Safety that says the numbers may be much higher — between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year who go to the hospital for care suffer some type of preventable harm that contributes to their death, the study says.
That would make medical errors the third-leading cause of death in America, behind heart disease, which is the first, and cancer, which is second.
The new estimates were developed by John T. James, a toxicologist at NASA’s space center in Houston who runs an advocacy organization called Patient Safety America. James has also written a book about the death of his 19-year-old son after what James maintains was negligent hospital care.
MORE
- If you do the things you need to in order to avoid dying from #1 or #2, then you're less likely of dying from #3......
= new reply since forum marked as read
- Is the way we seem to end up describing much, these days. In a society based upon money, what happens to it when the money becomes more worthless with each passing day?
...would be an accurate description of the US health ''care'' system. None of which come with a guarantee nor any assurance as to the efficacy of the products or services being rendered.
- Void where prohibited by law.
I've developed a simpler method: I just stay away from them. They almost did me in, twice, in 2009. And that was after several years of failed treatments. My dresser became a virtual cornucopia of brightly-colored pills. Mine competing for ''best-in-show'' with my wife's collection of western medicine's finest offerings.
So I got out. I live alternatively now and haven't felt better in this past year since I began. I'm not looking back.
- So they missed their chance......
Probiotics helped me when I was doing a tox-cleanse last year. I'd been trying to find a way to treat recurring idiopathic urticaria I'd been going to doctors for the previous 7 years. Prednisone was the drug of choice that I ended up on, when nothing else would work. Where upon it began taking me apart internally. It induced a diabetic condition that had to be treated with drugs that caused other very serious problems.
Ultimately it all caused a condition which resulted in a Triple-Aortic Aneurysm that turned into a quadruple a month later and they had to open me up again. So now I'm all patched up with Dupont's finest Gortex plastic aorta-sleeves and arterial sutures. While putting all that in, that's when they found the cancer.
In the end they had me going to the bathroom literally every hour on the hour and sometimes as frequently as every twenty minutes! I got no sleep at all. I'd just pass-out every few days. All from those damned pills. When they said they heard something wrong with my heart on an EKG, that's when I decided changes were in order.
- So no matter what happens from here on out, I'd rather be the author of my fate as opposed to being an income-producing unit for Big Pharma.
I too battled serious illness and staved-off death, was riddled with aneurysms and cancer four years ago. I got this way with medical science helping all the way. I didn't get better until I took control back of my health decisions. It seems that many of our problems stem from the fact that we've allowed ourselves to be poisoned by our progress.
By accepting the pollution, the manufacture of processed food products with chemicals no one knows the impacts upon human health, and further allow the degradation of the air we breathe, the water we drink and our bodies to be overwhelmed by, bathed-in, and smeared upon with lotions and creams (many known carcinogens as well) and full of endocrine-disrupting chemicals -- and with no stopping them in-sight -- then these are the kinds of health problem we must accept as the price.
- Or, we can change it. Those are the only choices. It's either that we conclude it's our planet, and our lives. Or, we let others make those decisions for us.
The other thing people need to be aware of, is health benefits of consuming Cannabis. And in particular, CBD.
The food I ate. I now eat about 80% vegetable matter everyday. What little meat I eat is primarily to obtain essential nutrients needed since my musculature has been ravaged by my condition. And then it's organic fowl and/or fish.
One of the strange ''benefits'' of my surgery was that I couldn't stand the smell of food for months. Meats especially so. They didn't want to release me from the hospital because I wouldn't eat. It took about 6 months before I could eat any meat. I still hadn't learned the lesson at that time.
But as I began coming off the pills, I had to make sure my body was getting the vitamins and nutrients it needed, so I went to a nutritionist and found me an osteopathic physician (now since retired after just 1 year! - So I'm looking again).
- Anyone attempting to live alternatively must have patience. There is no quick fix I know of to repair this damage because it was done to us incrementally as well. And that's how you fix it, one bite at a time.......
...in nutrition in medical school. Because the AMA knows that good nutrition means bad business.
With all the doctors I saw previously, all the specialists and surgeons, not one ever discussed my nutritional intake, nor did any inquire as to what kind of environment I lived in, worked in, etc.
All they saw was that I exhibited certain symptoms within certain parameters and a pharmaceutical-chemical/surgical/cancer treatment response(s) were ordered up. And with each one came another set or series of problems and consequences. Few, if any of which are discussed or inquired into very fully with you by your doctor. Just the bare minimum, if that. We can thank the lawyers for much of this. You discuss it, you own it.
But the very things doctors were taught to consider impacting and negatively affecting the things growing in their petri dishes when they were in medical school, becomes oblivious to them and just so much background noise against the beatific sounds of their soaring medical practices, Big Pharma conferences (free golfing vacations), yachts and vacation homes, and bank investments. No one goes to the doctor to be healed anymore. Just treated. That's all they're allowed to do.
- What this is, is one more example of how all aspects of our society have been bankrupt for some time now. The medical industry is no different in this regard. The only difference here, is that we're ''the product'' being developed, nurtured, maintained and eventually composted.
[center]
- I eschew all labels. Especially that one......
[quote] - If you do the things you need to in order to avoid dying from #1 or #2, then you're less likely of dying from #3...... [/quote]
Nope, I don't think it'll work like that. If you avoid #1 and #2, you're could still be afflicted with #4, 5, 6, 7, 8,... all driving you to a hospital - where you once again have to face #3. I think instead of avoiding #1, and #2, you should embrace them and make sure that they do the trick before doctors get their hands on you.
I personally am building up a nest egg of money. When I feel it's time to go, I'm going to buy a whole crap load of cocaine and get a bunch of prostitutes and die mid-stroke of a drug overdose. Now I just need to worry about avoiding accidents until then...
I just thought of another plus of my plan. I don't have to worry about saving up for my retirement 
I often spent the night in my Dad and Mom's room while they were in the hospital. After I got a family of my own, and the hospital stays became more frequent, that wasn't as easy to do.
- But I totally agree. Never leave a loved one unescorted in a hospital. There are too many things and people in those places that kill.
I had to watch both parents wither away from our medical system. Although the advances in the ways they could kill a patient had increased exponentially between 1986 when my father died, and 1999 when my mother died. It still took my own experience and an actual NDE and an OBE to make me finally see.
- What the takeaway was: ''Take charge of your life.''
...before they got sick. And living their lives as close to possible to exactly what it was like before they got sick. Not making the connection that maybe that was what made them sick to begin with. It happens so slowly that we often miss the connection by the time our lifestyles catch up to us.
So rejection of the crap being handed out as medicine these days, isn't enough. The foods one eats, the fluoridated and chemically laden water one drinks, the environment one lives in, and all those personal care products one uses and consumes, they are all working together in slowing -- inch by inch -- and inextricably lowering our body's ability to fight off disease. Which accelerates the natural aging process and is why there seems to be so many ''young'' middle-aged people who can look like like death walking.
So you have to change all that too. EDC's are probably the worst. They get so close to us from direct use and consumption by ingestion, and application onto our bodies in the form of personal care products that most think that they are benign. Safe. Nothing could be further from the truth. Which why agencies like the FDA and CDC and EPA are essentially useless to us. They work for others. Not us.
One has to decide how far one can go. Obviously, living an unprocessed life can be more expensive and/or time-consuming. And we Americans love the idea of popping pills or shooting magic bullets to fix our problems.
- That's the lie we've been led to believe in. And it's killing us......
