| 08/08/2005 |
| Letters to the editor |
| Bill
falls short on exposing errors Editor: While it’s certainly a step in the right direction, the patient safety act recently passed by Congress will do little to stem the epidemic of medical errors. The new law’s biggest flaw is that it allows for voluntary reporting of medical errors. Congress should have made error reporting mandatory. Preventable medical errors kill as many as 98,000 hospital patients a year, representing a leading cause of death and a huge threat to public safety in America. It is the equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing every day in America. How long do you think it would take Congress to get to the bottom of that problem? Equally disturbing is that the bill keeps error reports confidential because Congress doesn’t want the reports being used in lawsuits. My wife, Maureen, died because of a misdiagnosis of breast cancer. Don’t you think if her doctors had misdiagnosed other women before her, we should have been able to find that out? Shouldn’t people be able to find out if their doctors are prone to making mistakes? The sad truth is that medical errors are swept under the rug at every turn. Mistakes in hospitals are handled through a secret internal peer-review process. Malpractice victims who settle lawsuits have to keep their mouths shut because they are forced to sign confidentiality agreements. And malpractice payments reported to the National Practitioner Databank are listed by numbers in order to shield the identities of the doctors. The medical establishment has gone to great lengths to make sure its dirty laundry isn’t aired in public. The bill passed by Congress will continue to keep Americans in the dark on the issue of medical errors. BILL THIEL West Pittston
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