Forgive me the crosspost:
An interesting website (lifted from the Skeptic Talk tribe). Religious fundamentalism is listed:
www.whatstheharm.net/
An interesting website (lifted from the Skeptic Talk tribe). Religious fundamentalism is listed:
www.whatstheharm.net/
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Re: What's the harm?
Fri, May 9, 2008 - 11:01 PMI noticed that a whole (whoopie!) 2 people were injured by acupuncture, one of whom had a congenital abnormality. When are these peoplwe going to publish stats on how many people have been killed by AMA treatments applied correctly? (Not to mention some _hideous_ cases of malpractice?) -
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Re: What's the harm?
Sat, May 10, 2008 - 8:29 AMCatseye,
<When are these peoplwe going to publish stats on how many people have been killed by AMA treatments applied correctly? (Not to mention some _hideous_ cases of malpractice?) >
I considered posting this in the diabetes thread, but here is more appropriate.
New study puts hospital error death rate at twice IOM's total
By Don Long
Medical Device Daily Managing Editor
People frequently die in hospitals because of medication errors and other mistakes. And when discussing this unfortunate reality, most put this yearly death total at 98,000 - a figure provided by the 1999 report "To Err is Human," by the Institute of Medicine (IOM; Washington). But that figure may be too low.
Way too low, according to HealthGrades (Lakewood, Colorado), a company that specializes in tracking patient outcomes and giving awards to hospitals that they assess as performing the best.
HealthGrades yesterday released a report setting the figure at double the IOM's estimates - a total of 195,000 - the result of what the organization terms "potentially preventable, in-hospital medical errors."
Worse, the actual figure may be even higher, according to Dr. Samantha Collier, vice president of medical affairs for HealthGrades.
"We're relying on data that hospitals submit, and that might be a reason to under-document" the actual number of errors and resultant in-hospital deaths, Collier told Medical Device Daily.
HealthGrades says the "Patient Safety in American Hospitals" study is the first to look at the mortality and economic impact of medical errors and injuries that occurred during Medicare hospital admissions nationwide from 2000 to 2002.
The HealthGrades study applies the mortality and economic impact models developed by Dr. Chunliu Zhan and Dr. Marlene Miller in a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in October 2003. The Zhan/Miller study supported the IOM's figure of 98,000 unnecessary in-hospital deaths annually, a figure which translates, in terms of deaths, to a national epidemic.
But Collier says that HealthGrades' total is probably much more accurate than these previous studies because its study is more comprehensive.
The IOM study, she noted, used extrapolated figures from three states, and the Zhan/Miller study looked at 7.5 million patient records from 28 states over one year. By contrast, HealthGrades analyzed three years of Medicare data in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, or about 45% of all hospital admissions (excluding obstetric patients) in the U.S. from 2000 to 2002, extrapolating them to the entire nation
This method "makes the extrapolation more accurate, but I [still] don't know if it's the exact right number," Collier told MDD. "And we were only looking at in-hospital errors," she said, suggesting that errors in the outpatient setting would balloon the death total even higher.
While the IOM report resulted in considerable "outrage" and clearly supported the need for "a complete paradigm shift," she says there has been little progress in taking the actions necessary to stem the tide of deaths.
Putting the problem in the most graphic terms possible, she says the 195,000 figure translates to "the equivalent of 390 jumbo jets full of people . . . dying each year due to likely preventable, in-hospital medical errors, making this one of the leading killers in the U.S." And she adds: "If the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's [Atlanta, Georgia] annual list of leading causes of death included medical errors, it would show up as No. 6, ahead of diabetes, pneumonia, Alzheimer's and renal disease." …..
The complete study, including the list of AHRQ patient-safety indicators, can be found at www.healthgrades.com.
Published: July 28, 2004
www.alternativehealth.co.nz/articl...tal.htm
Peace,
Peter -
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Re: What's the harm?
Sat, May 10, 2008 - 1:29 PMBravo, Peter. You have posted a study with the right sort of verification. I knew you could do it.
<I considered posting this in the diabetes thread, but here is more appropriate. >
As frightening as these figures are (and I cannot dispute them.) I cannot help but wonder how many of these deaths could have been prevented by a single payer health care system. The system we have sucks. I know one elderly gentleman who nearly died of a mold allergy because Kaiser Permanente refused to do the proper tests, even though he came to the hospital armed with a mold report on his house. I had to come in their with him and demand names and job titles and tell the staff it was for the malpractice suit in case he died. Nothing scares a bunch of bureaucrats more than a bald guy in a suit and writing things in a notebook.
Would these death figures drop if we can arrange proper budgets and better priorities in our hospitals?
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Re: What's the harm?
Sat, May 10, 2008 - 3:11 PMBill,
<Would these death figures drop if we can arrange proper budgets and better priorities in our hospitals?>
Also from the same article:
- "If we could focus our efforts on just four key areas - failure to rescue, bed sores, postoperative sepsis and postoperative pulmonary embolism - and reduce these incidents by just 20%, we could save 39,000 people from dying every year," says Collier.
She acknowledges that the study was not designed to uncover a set of solutions, since the particular solutions "will vary from hospital to hospital." But she cites two important avenues hospitals need to pursue.
The first, Collier says, is "transparency" concerning medical errors, while adding that this is "easier said than done, given our legal situation and [what is happening in] the malpractice crisis states." But, "we will never get to improvement [in medical errors] without being transparent about the problem," she says. "We need to put pressure on hospitals, doctors and nurses to find out `What is the error rate at your hospital, and what are you doing about it?' At minimum, [hospitals] should make this transparent within their own organization."
Put still another way, she says that a solution is unlikely without knowing the extent and nature of the problem.
A second approach, she says, is for hospitals to develop a team or "task force" assigned to tackle patient safety issues. "We need to understand the processes that occur and bring back solutions in a team approach. That's what everybody's advocating." The approach, she says, would be similar to that used by airlines - specifically "a whole team, all on the same page, before we take off and land." -
Peace,
Peter
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Re: What's the harm?
Sun, May 11, 2008 - 2:07 PM<Also from the same article: >
It seems to me that most of the problems cited in that article are caused by a for-profit health system that puts money before the patients.
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Re: What's the harm?
Sat, May 10, 2008 - 1:10 AMI think we should think critically of the information given on this site. :) -
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Re: What's the harm?
Sat, May 10, 2008 - 9:03 AMYay! Critical thinking!
We should write to the site owners. I've already asked why astrology isn't listed. But the site does beg the question: can you save people from their own stupidity? -
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Re: What's the harm?
Sun, May 11, 2008 - 10:30 AMThese idiots (in the "whatstheharm" link) just totally discredited themselves. They claim that treatment for repressed memories is "pseudo-science", and that the utterly discredited "False Memory Syndrome" is real.
These people have an agenda, and it is one that only serves themselves. -
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Re: What's the harm?
Sun, May 11, 2008 - 1:01 PMI didn't look at much myself but I lost a lot of faith in their accuracy when they called chiropractic an "energy-based" practice. I'm studying to become one myself; that claim is total bunk. -
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Re: What's the harm?
Mon, May 12, 2008 - 2:10 AMChiropractic treatment remains controversial, for some reason it has just managed to accrue some undue credibility.
skepdic.com/chiro.html -
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Re: What's the harm?
Mon, May 12, 2008 - 7:36 PMI'm glad to hear you're giving it some credible thought; I would love to discuss different views on it if you'd like.
That goes for anyone else with something to say about it, also.
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Unsu...
Re: What's the harm?
Sun, May 11, 2008 - 9:16 PMI looked under their Vegetarianism/Veganism category.
Three of the seven cases cited have nothing at all to do with veg*nism, and the others have less to do with any perceived dangers of either diet and more to do with ignorance or outright stupidity of people.
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Re: What's the harm?
Sat, May 10, 2008 - 1:20 PMI find it absolutely horrifying that death by untreated diabetes is the number one cause of death amongst fundie kids. Religious freedom is all well and good, but we as a society have to start drawing better limits. -
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Re: What's the harm?
Sat, May 10, 2008 - 3:08 PM<death by untreated diabetes is the number one cause of death amongst fundie kids.>
According to what study? :) -
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Re: What's the harm?
Sun, May 11, 2008 - 2:04 PM<According to what study? :)>
<<Dramatically clutches chest and staggers backwards>>
Sacre' Bleu. You have stabbed me to the quick M'sieur Peter!
Actually that was a good point, Peter. Skimming through the section on Fundamentalism, I saw that there were quite a few kids who had died of untreated diabetes and that most of these kids had parents going to the same churches remark was indeed based on a surface observation and was not based on any sort of scientific study. However, based on the facts that were dragged to light, there really needs to be a study or series of studies on the deaths of children in these wacko churches. -
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Re: What's the harm?
Mon, May 12, 2008 - 7:14 AMMost of the things listed are frequent targets of skeptics, such as the people in the magazine, The Skeptical Inquirer. One of the unfortunate byproducts of the information explosion and computer publishing revolution is that people can put whatever lies they want on the Internet, create whatever story they want, and if someone is gullible enough to believe them, they have followers.
Something that caught MY eye is the belief in dowsing. Ever found water using a stick? How about a pair of brass rods? Do you believe it can be done?
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Re: What's the harm?
Mon, May 12, 2008 - 8:52 AMNo. Blind tests confirm it to be no better than guesswork. Some 'commercial' dowsers my consciously or subconsciously be aware of factors that indicate the presence of water/pipes/whatever but the companies aren't releasing stats. Scientific testing shows it to be no better than guesswork though. -
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Re: What's the harm?
Mon, May 12, 2008 - 10:46 AMGRIM:
I tend to agree with you. The tool I use for utility location is something called a 'verifier', and works with inductively coupled fields. I actually induce a charge with a transmitter unit and then that charge is recieved with the walk-over locating unit. The unit tells me the location, but not the depth of the underground utility in question. The BIG problem is that this location method only works for metallic pipes or pipes which have tracer wires. There's a lot of pipe in the ground that's polyethylene, PVC, and clay. Harder to find, but with vacuum excavation to expose the utility it's not that difficult to dig up anymore.
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