According to research from Johns Hopkins University, “never events”, or events that should never happen in surgery, occur at least 4,000 times annually in the United States. It also revealed that “never events” occurred more than 80,000 times between 1990 and 2010.
New York patients may be interested to learn that a 60-year-old claimed in a lawsuit that a Connecticut hospital removed the wrong body part during a surgical procedure. She claimed that the doctors then attempted to cover up the mistake.
New York patients should know that an estimated 7,000 people around the country die annually due to medication errors, and a total of about 1 million errors happen each year in U.S. hospitals. In one 2016 case, an 87-year-old woman was rushed to the emergency room due to a high fever, and her sister gave the ER doctor the woman’s medical history and a list of the medications she was on including some that had been recently added for cognitive issues.
Tort reform is a controversial subject that raises a lot of questions. This issue has two sides and both sides are very adamant about their position. Before deciding for yourself if tort reform is required, it is important to understand what it is intended to achieve and what it would entail.
According to statistics, there are over 24.4 million people in the United States over the age of 40 who are affected by cataracts. 50% of people over the age of 80 have cataracts. The federal government spends $3.4 billion annually for the treatment of this condition through Medicare.
Hysterectomy is the second most common procedure among women in the United States. More than 22,000,000 have had a hysterectomy. According to 2011 Women’s Health Stats from the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), over 500,000 hysterectomies are performed annually and 33.3% women will have this procedure by the age of 60. In 2008, 18% of all hysterectomies were performed as outpatient surgeries.
According to the National Center on Elder Abuse, a study found that 44% of nursing home residents report abuse and 95% report neglect of themselves or other residents within the past year. Of the abuse that is being reported in nursing homes – 29% is physical abuse; 21% is psychological abuse; 14% is gross neglect; 7% is sexual abuse; 7% is financial exploitation; and 22% is resident-to-resident abuse. Another study found that more than 50% of nursing home staff report mistreating residents within the past year.
Like anywhere else, America has its fair share of people who seek mental medical help. Thousands and thousands of people across the nation seek treatment each year.
It is projected that the health care employment sector, employment will increase 19% from 2014 to 2024, adding about 2.3 million new jobs, which is more rapid than the average for all occupations considering policy killing jobs and high taxes are in effect and making this recession last much longer than it should have. Occupations in health care will add more jobs than any other industry but the job growth here would be much greater if the ACA was never passed and America was kinder to the private sector.
While New York is not one of the states that gives protection to medical professionals who apologize for a medical error, some facilities and practitioners around the country have noted that saying “I’m sorry” often reduces the risk of a lawsuit. In the past, the more common practice has been denial, but apologizing is becoming more common.
