During the health care reform "debate" of the past few months, the issue of tort reform has been raised as a way to hold down spiraling health care costs. Republican lawmakers bemoaned the lack of any restrictions on "frivolous lawsuits" in the health reform legislation. What frivolous lawsuits? Interestingly, whenever these subjects come up, there never seem to be any statistics to back up their case. The only statistic mentioned is how much malpractice insurance rates have risen!
The logic goes something like this: Poor, altruistic hospitals and medical doctors do their darnedest to keep us all healthy, only to be slapped with lawsuits from disgruntled patients. This, in turn, causes their malpractice insurance rates to rise, forcing them to charge more for their services. Oh, and don't forget all those useless tests they "have" to order on every patient lest they be sued for malpractice.
How much truth is there to this argument? Not much, it seems. While the whiners never cite any supporting data for their cause, there is plenty to show the kind of harm the health care industry wreaks on patients. A 2004 report by HealthGrades, an organization that rates medical facilities, showed that for the years 2000-2002, patient deaths caused by medical errors averaged 195,000. Those were just deaths, mind you, and so were just a fraction of all medical errors that actually occurred in those years.
In other news, the December 2007 issue of Consumer Reports cited increasing rates of patient deaths from implanted medical devices. They cite statistics from the Food and Drug Administration reporting 2830 deaths, 116,086 injuries and 96,485 malfunctioning devices. And that's for the year 2006, alone! The magazine notes that many of these cases involved devices that had been on recall lists.
As for medical tests, an article in the September 2009 AARP Bulletin relates that fully half of all prescribed antibiotics are unnecessary; $1.1 billion is wasted each year in this manner. Not only that, but this practice is largely to blame for the appearance of "superbugs" such as MRSA and C. difficile. MRI and CT scans are also over-prescribed, by as much as one-third. These scans represent a $100 billion a year industry, so it's easy to see why doctors think everyone should have one. There's one problem, though: CT scans bathe patients in enough radiation to equal 50 chest x-rays, a definite cancer risk. Why do physicians over-prescribe and over-test? According to doctors interviewed for the article, it's easier than explaining to the patient why they don't need it! To top it all off, Consumer Reports notes in its October 2009 issue that doctors fail to notify patients of adverse test results in 7% of cases. Why order the tests if the results won't be reported?
The industry is doing little if anything to reduce these errors. The latest issue of Consumer spotlights the high rate of "central-line" infections that occur in ICU wards. These bloodstream infections, caused by contamination of large intravenous catheters, represent 30% of the 99,000 reported hospital-infection related deaths each year. Total infection rates, by the way, are in the neighborhood of 1.7 million every year.
As of October 1, 2008, Medicare no longer pays bills associated with hospital errors; unbelievably, hospitals and doctors have the nerve to bill Medicare and insurance companies for mistakes they make, then for the treatment necessary afterward. "Tort reform" and "frivolous lawsuits"? They've got to be kidding.
The logic goes something like this: Poor, altruistic hospitals and medical doctors do their darnedest to keep us all healthy, only to be slapped with lawsuits from disgruntled patients. This, in turn, causes their malpractice insurance rates to rise, forcing them to charge more for their services. Oh, and don't forget all those useless tests they "have" to order on every patient lest they be sued for malpractice.
How much truth is there to this argument? Not much, it seems. While the whiners never cite any supporting data for their cause, there is plenty to show the kind of harm the health care industry wreaks on patients. A 2004 report by HealthGrades, an organization that rates medical facilities, showed that for the years 2000-2002, patient deaths caused by medical errors averaged 195,000. Those were just deaths, mind you, and so were just a fraction of all medical errors that actually occurred in those years.
In other news, the December 2007 issue of Consumer Reports cited increasing rates of patient deaths from implanted medical devices. They cite statistics from the Food and Drug Administration reporting 2830 deaths, 116,086 injuries and 96,485 malfunctioning devices. And that's for the year 2006, alone! The magazine notes that many of these cases involved devices that had been on recall lists.
As for medical tests, an article in the September 2009 AARP Bulletin relates that fully half of all prescribed antibiotics are unnecessary; $1.1 billion is wasted each year in this manner. Not only that, but this practice is largely to blame for the appearance of "superbugs" such as MRSA and C. difficile. MRI and CT scans are also over-prescribed, by as much as one-third. These scans represent a $100 billion a year industry, so it's easy to see why doctors think everyone should have one. There's one problem, though: CT scans bathe patients in enough radiation to equal 50 chest x-rays, a definite cancer risk. Why do physicians over-prescribe and over-test? According to doctors interviewed for the article, it's easier than explaining to the patient why they don't need it! To top it all off, Consumer Reports notes in its October 2009 issue that doctors fail to notify patients of adverse test results in 7% of cases. Why order the tests if the results won't be reported?
The industry is doing little if anything to reduce these errors. The latest issue of Consumer spotlights the high rate of "central-line" infections that occur in ICU wards. These bloodstream infections, caused by contamination of large intravenous catheters, represent 30% of the 99,000 reported hospital-infection related deaths each year. Total infection rates, by the way, are in the neighborhood of 1.7 million every year.
As of October 1, 2008, Medicare no longer pays bills associated with hospital errors; unbelievably, hospitals and doctors have the nerve to bill Medicare and insurance companies for mistakes they make, then for the treatment necessary afterward. "Tort reform" and "frivolous lawsuits"? They've got to be kidding.
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