Medical Malpractice
posted in Events & Press, Research & Science, Medical Community, Center for Structural Wellness |
There are almost 100,000 deaths in US hospitals each year from preventable medical errors, according to Public Citizen. This number doubles if you use the company HealthGrades numbers. I wonder how many deaths from unpreventable medical errors?
• Only one in eight preventable medical errors committed in hospitals results in a malpractice claim. (Harvard Medical Practice Study Group, Patients, Doctors and Lawyers: Medical Injury, Malpractice Litigation, and Patient Compensation in New York, 1990.)
• Punitive Damages are awarded in less than 1 percent of medical malpractice cases. (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1996.)
And yet the costs are still high:
• The annual costs to society for medical errors in hospitals at $17 billion to $29 billion. (Institute of Medicine, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System, 2000.)
Could you imagine if the other 7 out of 8 people filed malpractice suits and punitive damages were awared in more than 1% of cases? Our economy would collapse for sure. The interesting thing about the punitive damages was that only 5% of cases paid over 1 million. I guess thats the value of a human life these days. Less then a million. With the creation of healthcare tribunals to get cases out of the court system these numbers will drop drastically in the future. We will be worth less than a 100k in no time.
Malpractice payments for doctors and insurers remain at about 1% of the total health care costs. $4.5 billion in 2001, with total health care costs at about $1.4 trillion. The western health care industry consumes about 15% of our gross domestic product. And according to Dr. Jay Parkinson, this industry runs at up to a 40% inefficiency rate. That is just maddening.
Dr. Jay Parkinson’s Hello Health practice will seriously address the inefficiency problem and give the best quality healthcare. He has created a way for the uninsured and the underinsured get the best healthcare possible. Amen for Dr. Jay.
A final note from Wikipedia:
US healthcare expenditures totaled US $2.2 trillion in 2006. According to Health Affairs, $7,498 will be spent on every woman, man and child in the United States in 2007, 20 percent of all spending. Costs are projected to increase to $12,782 by 2016.