56 Year Old Man Enters Hospital with Shoulder Pain – Dies 6 Weeks Later After Developing Infection in Hospital

The following is a true story that is, unfortunately, typical of the dangers in being admitted into hospitals today in the U.S. Carl was a fighter, a survivor. Nothing was handed to him in life. When he was 15, both his father and mother walked out on him and his younger brother, leaving Carl alone to raise his sibling. Somehow, the two of them managed to earn enough money to keep paying the mortgage and save the family home. Carl was a handyman, seemingly able to fix anything. He went on to become a master plumber. He was a tall man (over 6 feet tall), and always seemed to turn up anytime someone was in need and could benefit from his services. When Carl started experiencing shoulder pain in his rotator cuff, one of his friends eventually convinced him to go have it checked out. Carl was not one to visit doctors or seek medical care, and he would have rather endured the shoulder pain than ask for pain medication. But his friend was insistent, so for her sake he begrudgingly agreed to be taken to the hospital, as he had been lying in bed with pain for so many days, that now his hip was starting to bother him also. Tragically, after the hospital admitted him, he soon developed pneumonia, and a Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection. 6 weeks later he was dead. Carl's friends watched their friend who entered the hospital system due to chronic shoulder pain be tortured and killed by the hospital, and they were powerless to do anything about it.

Data on Serious Hospital Errors Will Now Be Withheld from the Public

Preventable medical mistakes are the third leading cause of death in the US, right after heart disease and cancer, claiming the lives of 210,000 Americans each year. More than two million people are affected by hospital-acquired infections each year, and 75,000-100,000 people die as a result of those infections. The federal government has quietly decided to “solve” the problem of hospital acquired conditions by burying the data.

1 in 5 Elderly US Patients Injured by Medical Care

A new study of more than 12,500 Medicare patients (with an average age of 76) found that nearly one in five suffer from medical injuries when receiving care. Two-thirds of the injuries occurred during outpatient care (such as doctor’s offices) rather than in hospitals. The often-preventable injuries were the direct result of medical care or management, not a result of the patient’s underlying condition. Past research has suggested at least 210,000 Americans are killed by preventable hospital errors each year.

Hospital Errors are the Third Leading Cause of Death in U.S.

New research estimates up to 440,000 Americans are dying annually from preventable hospital errors. This puts medical errors as the third leading cause of death in the United States, underscoring the need for patients to protect themselves and their families from harm, and for hospitals to make patient safety a priority.

1 in 4 Chance You’ll Be Harmed at a Hospital

Health Impact News Editor Comments: Hospital errors are now the third leading cause of death in the U.S., a fact that is not even denied by mainstream media anymore. Dr. Martin Makary is the author of The New York Times bestselling book Unaccountable: What Hospitals Won’t Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Healthcare. In the article […]

Report: Medicare Harms 134,000 and Kills 15,000 Every Month

Health Impact News Editor Comments: In this report by Marshall Allen of ProPublica, strong evidence is given to show that the vast majority of medical errors go unreported in the United States. Citing the government’s own data from the Department of Health and Human Services, we learn that medical errors among Medicare beneficiaries alone probably account […]

Millions of people die each year from medical errors and infections in hospitals according to World Health Organization

Health Impact News Editor Comments: I am not sure why WHO linked hospital deaths to flying, which is one of the safest forms of travel. They should have mentioned that there is three times more risk of being killed in a hospital than there is in driving your car, as auto deaths in the US are […]

One in three people in the United States will encounter some kind of mistake during a hospital stay

by Julie Steenhuysen
(Reuters) – About one in three people in the United States will encounter some kind of mistake during a hospital stay, U.S. researchers said Thursday.
The finding, which is based on a new tool for measuring hospital errors, is about 10 times higher than estimates using older methods, suggesting much work remains in […]