Yesterday the Obama Administration announced a program intended to reduce medical errors and accidents and save more than 60,000 lives over three years. The program will be funded by $1 billion authorized by the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") and is projected to reduce Medicare reimbursement costs by $50 billion over ten years, plus billions more savings for Medicaid and non-government expenditures. How could such a huge payout be possible?
The answer seems to be that deadly but readily fixable hospital practices are endemic. This PBS Newshour segment reports that 98,000 lives are lost each year in America as a result of medical errors and accidents in hospitals, according to a 1999 study. A study covering 2000-2002 estimated that the annual US death toll from hospital errors was 195,000. A November 2010 study estimated that hospital errors cause 180,000 deaths per year just among Medicare patients. To give these death rates context, "only" 32,708 people were killed in traffic accidents in 2010.
The death toll is just the tip of the ice berg; these same reports estimate that 33-40% of patients are the victims of some kind of hospital error that does them harm and increases costs. Perhaps that's the most shocking statistic of all. No wonder hospitals don't want to be held accountable for their negligence.