Medical error—the third leading cause of death in the US was referenced and linked (full text appears to be publicly readable) by Medscapefree resource: you just have to register yesterday opening with:
Medical error is the third leading cause of death in the United States, after heart disease and cancer, according to findings published today in BMJ.
As such, medical errors should be a top priority for research and resources, say authors Martin Makary, MD, MPH, professor of surgery, and research fellow Michael Daniel, from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland.
But accurate, transparent information about errors is not captured on death certificates, which are the documents the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) uses for ranking causes of death and setting health priorities. Death certificates depend on International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes for cause of death, so causes such as human and system errors are not recorded on them.
And it's not just the US. According to the World Health Organization, 117 countries code their mortality statistics using the ICD system as the primary health status indicator…
[more at the corrected link]
Kosak feelingpudding relayed todayread, rec & tip, if you appreciate Consumer Reports’ article, “What You Don’t Know About Your Doctor Could Hurt You”, and emphasized inadequacy of impartial physician and healthcare facility review, censure and correction procedures, as well as the role of records errors.Many electronic medical/health records originated as billing systems: nothing to bill = no way to enter data.--ed. FP’s blockquotes include useful links from the CS article, which also appears to be readable in full free online and offers commentability.
Kosak thePHATman ‘s“Healthcare — We Pay Them to Kill Us”read, rec & tip if you appreciate, does include heavy tangents into the current political campaign, but it is written from the perspective of his
8 years as a volunteer counselor for a non-profit drug rehab program helping addicts and their families deal with, and recover from, the destructive effects addiction has had on their lives...
My mother was the national executive director, my middle brother was a senior counselor, and his wife was a senior counselor. We have even opened up our own home to give people a safe place to recover and stay with us until they got back on their feet.
I've spent days, and nights, with people I had only met the a day or two before, and stayed with them all through their initial period of detox. Through the program we were able to secure two hospitals in Dallas, where we could bring people that didn't have money, but were in desperate need of detox…
ApplyLiberally just published “Arizona, Home of the Grand Canyon — and No Healthcare for Kids”read, tip & rec if you appreciate:
...According to the state’s legislature, kids whose families cannot afford insurance don’t deserve it—even when it costs Arizona nothing.
KidsCare (Arizona’s version of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, commonly known as CHIP) has been frozen since 2010, and as activists have been pleading to the state government to lift that freeze and include it in this year’s budget, Arizona’s leaders had a different idea on Tuesday when they left the federally-funded program out.
But what does the budget include? Corporate tax breaks that are part of a $26 million package.
Senate President Andy Biggs, who is a millionaire by the way, also refuses to bring to the senate floor a bill proposed by Rep. Regina Cobb that would reinstate the program for 30,000 kids at no cost to Arizona. That bill, mind you, easily passed the House.
“I don’t support KidsCare,” Biggs simply stated. … He also insists that the tens of thousands of kids without insurance are already covered by Medicaid (which is false) and that if we give them coverage, they will come to expect it.
Oh, you know, like how people expect food and water and air?...
and on that also MotherMags wrote “Arizona kills children’s insurance program that every other state offers (because it costs nothing).”
Joan McCarter reported “Kansas strips Planned Parenthood of state Medicaid funding, in violation of federal law.”read, tip & rec if you appreciate
“Johnson & Johnson to pay $55million to family of female cancer victim — 1,200 more lawsuits coming” was from Leslie Salzillo yesterday:
Two women’s deaths due to ovarian cancer have been linked to the use of Johnson & Johnson Baby Powder—yes, the same powder that has been sprinkled over the bottoms of babies for more than 100 years. In cases of baby girls, the dangerous talc seeps into their vaginas. For decades, girls and women have used baby powder in their undergarments and under their arms for “cleanliness and to reduce odor.” Even with the reported dangers, the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) considers baby powder to be a “cosmetic,” and therefore does not regulate the product.
This cancer-causing product is still being promoted and used on infants, babies, and toddlers. Even with the known dangers…
and Streicher187's parents' story of personal medical catastrophe and plea for gofundme help was published Monday.
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I’m listing just these few health/medical&related diaries I’ve hunted up and found going too un-read because I’m noticing increasing fails with the dk tagging system, in these and other topics. Medical care and health care and related issues are something I’ve written on a lot at this site, mostly to bring outside information resources in and make them available, because this is something that matters to each and every one of us, sooner or later, personally and for our families and communities. How many diaries on these issues are falling into limbo is hard to gauge — the system appears to be often disregarding tags actually applied to diaries, and pulling terms out of diaries to use instead, a problem that’s cut some readers off from tagged diary series they’ve been participating in for years, and others from just reading on topics that matter to them whose tags they follow.
Depending on how extensive this problem is, the site may lose its utility for the most dedicated writers and readers, leaving it a big noisy echo-chamber for those who come just to shout and see their names “in print”. This must be hard on DK staff and management as well as on the membership. I hope we’ll see the tag problems repaired and the site remaining committed to issues and to increasing an ever-higher quality of citizen journalism.