One out of five hospital patients in a follow-up study experienced adverse events due to inadequate medical care after leaving the hospital and returning home.
Prescription drugs accounted for the most injuries after discharge, affecting some 66 percent of the 400 patients involved in the study. Antibiotics were responsible for 38 percent of the reactions, corticosteroids for 16 percent, cardiovascular drugs another 16 percent, and 10 percent involved pain relievers.
One-third of the post-discharge events could have been avoided, and another one-third could have been less severe, if patients had received proper medical care, according to researchers.
Adverse events ranged from unnoticed laboratory problems to permanent disability. More than half of the patients (64 percent) had symptoms for several days, including rash caused by antibiotics, insomnia due to corticosteroid use and constipation caused by pain medications. Three percent of patients suffered permanent disabilities.
The commonality of adverse events caused by inadequate medical care is not new. One past study found that medical errors cause more deaths in the United States each year than highway accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS.
After this study, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommended that new laws require thorough reporting of medical errors, and also made recommendations to reduce medical errors. However, there is still no system in place to monitor such occurrences.
Post-discharge events could be reduced by more thorough examinations of patients while still in the hospital, better monitoring of patients after their release, and informing them of possible drug side effects and interactions, said researchers.
They also stressed that making patient information available to doctors electronically would be beneficial in reducing medical errors. However, widespread investment in such technology has not yet occurred.
Annals of Internal Medicine February 4, 2003;138(3):161-7
As health reporter Nick Regush said last year:
"There is no way to be nice about this. There is no point in raising false hopes. There is no treatment or vaccine in sight. There is no miracle breakthrough on the horizon. Medicine, as we know it, is dying. It's entering a terminal phase. What began as an acute illness reached the chronic stage about a decade ago and progression toward death has been remarkably swift and well beyond anything one could have predicted. The disease is caused by conflict of interest, tainted research, greed for big bucks, pretentious doctors and scientists, lying, cheating, invasion by the morally bankrupt marketing automatons of the drug industry, derelict politicians and federal and state regulators - all seasoned with huge doses of self-importance and foul odor."
"There is no way to be nice about this. There is no point in raising false hopes. There is no treatment or vaccine in sight. There is no miracle breakthrough on the horizon.
Medicine, as we know it, is dying. It's entering a terminal phase.
What began as an acute illness reached the chronic stage about a decade ago and progression toward death has been remarkably swift and well beyond anything one could have predicted.
The disease is caused by conflict of interest, tainted research, greed for big bucks, pretentious doctors and scientists, lying, cheating, invasion by the morally bankrupt marketing automatons of the drug industry, derelict politicians and federal and state regulators - all seasoned with huge doses of self-importance and foul odor."
Currently, the United States spends about 1.5 trillion dollars for healthcare, and the projections are that it will double in less than 10 years.
The sad tragedy is that we are spending all of this money on disease management focused on drugs and surgery, and our return on this investment is profoundly poor. More and more people do not have the energy they need to get through the day while millions of others are suffering with painful crippling diseases because they have violated basic health principles.
Often, negative health and lifestyle choices are made because of a lack of knowledge, and it's my passion to increase the public's awareness of the health tragedies facing the nation. I will give you, the consumer, the tools to become a major force for good health and to alleviate disease and suffering.
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