Despite Efforts, Study Finds No Decline in Medical Errors

[Elmore Furth]

Obama's Afordable Care Act is supposed to save approximately $500 billion over the next ten years partly through efforts to make the Medicare program more efficient and to reduce waste, fraud and abuse.

These findings do not give one confidence that there are going to be decreased errors to decrease costs.

If there is a half a trillion dollars lost in “waste, fraud, and abuse” of Medicare, shouldn't President Obama look for it now? Is Obamanomics better than Reaganomics? I think there several pipe dreams here.

People have been promising to balance budgets by eliminating "waste, fraud and abuse" for years without any any success. Good luck here.

Despite intensive efforts to improve patient safety, a six-year study at 10 North Carolina hospitals showed no decline in so-called patient "harms," which included medical errors and unavoidable mistakes.

Sorting through patients' medical records from more than 2,300 randomly selected hospital admissions, teams of reviewers found 588 instances of patient harm, which included events such as hospital-acquired infections, surgical errors and medication dosage mistakes.

Despite Efforts, Study Finds No Decline in Medical Errors

[jaxx]

1. I read this article earlier today.

There is no way it can be tied to the Affordable Care Act.

From the article:

While most harms were minor and temporary, 50 were life-threatening, 17 resulted in permanent problems and 14 people died, said the researchers, who selected North Carolina hospitals because the state has shown a strong commitment to patient safety. The admissions records spanned the period from January 2002 to December 2007.