Excessive Bleeding Still Bad, Despite Other Positives In Report

There're always two ways of looking at things. Trust me. But seriously, if one out of seven Medicare beneficiaries were harmed...that means six out of seven were...not harmed. I'm interested in the breakout of how many...that were not harmed...were helped...and how many were...somewhat helped. But these reports are always incomplete.

Another thing is, Medicare is free for these old folks and really, you get what you pay for. A lot of these "adverse events" were just "temporary health setbacks." What do you expect? You have a cold and it gets a little bit worse? You can't live forever, and even if you can, a cold that gets a little more "adverse" is hardly anything to cry about.

I will say excessive bleeding can be a problem, regardless of age. And there is no excuse for intravenous fluid overload. I've known a few wicked nurses in my time and you can't impose enough restrictions or slipknots on them as far as I'm concerned.

One of every seven Medicare beneficiaries who is hospitalized is harmed as a result of problems with the medical care there, according to a new study from the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services.

The study said unexpected adverse events added at least $4.4 billion a year to government health costs and contributed to the deaths of about 180,000 patients a year.

In a single month, October 2008, the report estimated that some 134,000 Medicare patients experienced at least one adverse event, ranging from a temporary health setback to death, during a hospital stay. It said 44 percent of them were “clearly or likely preventable.”

That study cited hospital infections as a major source of problems, but the inspector general’s report found other events to be more common. The most frequent problems classified as adverse events, it said, were those related to medication, like excessive bleeding, followed by those related to patient care, like intravenous fluid overload, and those related to surgery and to infection.

[The New York Times]