Consumers Union publishes the highly-regarded Consumer Reports. I just received an email from CU with the following subject heading: "Hospitals' dirty secrets endanger you."
What are the "dirty secrets?" Here's what Consumers Union says: "Every year two million Americans contract a hospital-acquired infection - one in every 20 patients becomes ill and 90,000 of them die."
Here's Consumers Union again:
Consumers Union notes that only four states require that hospitals reveal their infection rates. CU then gives a call for people to act to make the infection rates public:
CU then provides a click-through with a suggested letter for readers to send email to their state legislators.
Once again, as has been reported in this site, it's better to stop the malpractice and the deaths than to punish the victims and their families. As CU notes, “Healthcare workers wash their hands far less than they should, particularly in critical areas like intensive care, surgery, anesthesia and the emergency room.” Instead of trying to prevent patients and their families from filing suits, maybe, just maybe, the Administration should be using its bully pulpit to prevent the malpractice that gives rise annually to the 90,000 deaths.
Consumer Union's site with the information and the suggested email to send is www.stophospitalinfections.org.
For additional postings on this site regarding how to reduce medical malpractice, search on my search bar for “medical” (without the quotation marks.) For instance, one of the latest postings is about how two states require that doctors at least legibly print or type their prescriptions. http://www.outoftheboxlawyering.com/archives/000064.html
Please send comments for posting to comments"@"outoftheboxlawyering.com. (But don't include the quotation marks. I'm just trying to minimize spam.)
Posted by ajlevy at January 11, 2005 3:05 PM