Military Officer - July 2006 - (Page 61) IVE By Yasmine Iqbal TIENT Medical mistakes, though uncommon, could be deadly. Learn how to protect yourself in five possible situations. Illustrations by Lewis Agrell I IN A P E RF EC T WOR L D, nobody would ever get sick or injured or need medical care. In a near-perfect world, health care systems would always provide high-quality care and medical professionals would make unerring diagnoses and prescribe or perform exactly the right treatments. But in our imperfect world, hospitals, doctors, and other health care professionals can and do make mistakes. A much-publicized 1999 study by the Institute of Medicine estimated that medical mistakes could kill as many as 98,000 people in U.S. hospitals every year. A more recent study by the health care ratings company HealthGrades estimated that the number of “patient safety incidents” in hospitals rose to 1.24 million between 2002 and 2004, up from 1.14 million over the previous three years. But there is good news. “The media tends to focus on the sensationalistic stories, but there’s a lot of good that’s being done as well,” says Diane Pinakiewicz, president of the National Patient Safety Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing health care errors. “The health care industry is recognizing that errors do happen and finding proactive ways to correct the processes that lead to those mistakes. They’re also encouraging patients and their family members to take a proactive role in detecting and preventing errors.” Following are five kinds of medical mistakes and problems that can lead to mistakes, what the health care industry is doing to prevent them, and what you can do to ensure that they don’t happen to you or a loved one. J U LY 2 0 0 6 MILITARY OFFICER 63
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