The researchers caution that most of medical errors aren't due to inherently bad doctors, and that reporting these errors shouldn't be addressed by punishment or legal action. Rather, they say, most errors represent systemic problems, including poorly coordinated care, fragmented insurance networks, the absence or underuse of safety nets, and other protocols, in addition to unwarranted variation in physician practice patterns that lack accountability.
Unwarranted variation is endemic in health care. Developing consensus protocols that streamline the delivery of medicine and reduce variability can improve quality and lower costs in health care. More research on preventing medical errors from occurring is needed to address the problem,†says Makary.
Michael Daniel of Johns Hopkins is a co-author on the study.
I as most nurses I suspect would agree the majority of unsafe conditions placing patients at risk have their inception in the hospital systems. Systems set up and manipulated to create maximum profit while utilizing minimal resources. Examples would be the use of emergency room metrics, failure to enforce specialist such as surgeons are available to come in to attend to patients in need of urgent intervention, deliberate nurse understaffing in a day of a surplus of nurses, boarding critically ill patients in regular ER beds for days, tolerance of horizontal violence, hospitialist covering several hospitals on one shift and often covering remotely even from their home in other cities and the cult of silence enforced by the cycle of intimidation. Consider the Baylor University Hospitals cover up and permitting of a grossly negligent neurosurgeon. Permitting him to harm and disable several patients amongst many reports from other concerned health care providers. Failures to hold him accountable and silencing those speaking up lead to many unnecessary catastrophic outcomes. A not so uncommon culture of cover up in many hospitals. Why???? Protecting profit and reputation of what most hospitals are now, huge coorperations. It's epidemic, pervasive, well protected and killing our patients. The question every healthcare provider must ask themselves is does it matter to them. Do protecting your patients matter enough to you that insist the minimal standard of care is adhered to simply because it is right and our first duty is to the patient....NOT OUR EMPLOYER
