What are the leading causes of death in the United States? Number one is heart disease. Number two is cancer. What is number three? Well, that depends who you ask. According to the CDC, it's respiratory disease. According to researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine, it's medical error. Why is there indiscretion?
"We can't change what we can't count and we can't change what we don't know," Anesthesiologist Dr. Ron Banister said. He believe this is a tracking problem.
"We typically go with the underlying ideology that lead to that subsequent event. We don't have any reporting standards that require us to look at what the medical error is," Dr. Banister said. There's a range of medical mistakes that can lead to death.
"These are system problems, these may be a nursing, physician or procedure error, or something that is overlooked in the whole process leading to an untimely death," Dr. Banister said. Fox 34 asked him, what's the most common medical error?
"Well that's actually a very good question, because actually, we don't know for sure," Dr. Banister said. Not knowing this information can hinder research, putting many Americans at risk.
"In the United States each year, there are approximately 35 million people admitted to a hospital. What these statistics mean, and they're probably low, is that one in 140 patients dies as a result of medical errors," Dr. Banister said. He believes this issue has a fix, and he's seen it in his own work.
"Back in the 1970's and early 80's, there was a problem with a lot of unaccounted anesthetic-related deaths. We formed a patient safety foundation that allowed us to look at these errors, and since then there's been a tremendous change to that. This was a combination of review of what was going on with medical errors in the anesthesia suite and also how we pre-oped our patients and monitored them," Dr. Banister said. He added that there are actions you can take to protect yourself. Number one is to have self-knowledge.
"Garbage in produces garbage out. It's quite frequent when I'm reviewing a patient's medical history, that I find out they have something that's going on that's listed there that's not real and vice-versa. They have something that's not listed there that needs to be accounted for," Dr. Banister said. "Number two, ask questions. They may find out as part of questioning why things are done, things they may not have to do or risks they don't want to take," Dr. Banister said. Combining patient responsibility with better hospital reporting may help get cause of death stats straight.
"People are still going to die, but they're not going to die because of systemic errors that are not being accounted for," Dr. Banister said. In an open letter, Johns Hopkins Medicine urges the CDC to immediately add medical errors to its annual list reporting the top causes of death. The letter insists that more clarification for the public and lawmakers can lead to more resources for patient safety. Click here to view the open letter.
