Hospital Care In USA Has Improved Significantly In Eight Years

[HuckleB]

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/202451.php

"Hospital care in the United States has improved considerably, especially in the treatment and care for patients with pneumonia, children's asthma care and heart attack, says a new report issued by the Joint Commission, titled Improving America's Hospitals: The Joint Commission's Report on Quality and Safety 2010."

According to the report, the heart attack result in 2009 was 97.7%, compared to 88.6% in 2002. A 97.7% score means the hospitals provided an evidence-based heart attack treatment, including aspirin on arrival and beta-blockers on leaving hospitals 977 times out of 1,000. The report measured hospital care improvement during the period 2002 through 2009 - an eight-year period. The Joint Commission drew data from over 3,000 accredited hospitals across the USA.

Mark R. Chassin, M.D., M.P.P., M.P.H., president, The Joint Commission, said: It is very encouraging that this year's report shows high rates of performance on these critical process measures and high levels of consistent excellence among hospitals on many measures. Hospitals devote enormous resources and energy to using these performance measures to drive improvement in their clinical processes. This report demonstrates that these efforts are resulting in consistently improving patient care in America's hospitals.

The report found:

* The use of evidence-based treatments has improved considerably, from an average of 81.8% composite performance on 957,000 chances to carry out care processes related to accountability measure in 2002, to 94.5% in 2009 - a 13.6% improvement in 8 years.

..."


--------------------------------

Hmmmmmm. Maybe hospitals do help people.

[madrchsod]

1. my hospital has....

they did an excellent job during my heart attack and continuing heart problems .

[HuckleB]

2. I'm glad to hear it!

Best to you...

[Crunchy Frog]

3. Not from what I've seen

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Crunchy%20Frog/40

But then again, I think I'm living in a medical backwater.

[HuckleB]

4. The world is not perfect, and even the improved data shows that hospitals are not perfect.

We can find an anecdote to argue any possible thing, but the question must be asked, "Does the anecdote represent the norm?" Yes, even if it's not the norm, we must work to eliminate such horrible experiences. Still, I'm not sure that humans are going to find a way to completely eliminate bad experiences and bad outcomes in any venture. We should strive to do so, but we also have to keep things in perspective, IMO.

[BuddhaGirl]

5. so sorry about your family's experience

There are so many more that we don't even hear about...my FIL had a horrible experience with hospital incompetence as well...

[wuvuj]

6. Medical Errors and Prescription Drugs are the Leading Cause of Death in US!

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/09/29/wrong-diagnosis-is-the-leading-cause-of-death-in-us.aspx


Ten years ago, Professor Bruce Pomerance of the University of Toronto concluded that properly prescribed and correctly taken pharmaceutical drugs were the fourth leading cause of death in the US.

More recently, Johns Hopkins Medical School refined this research and discovered that medical errors and prescription drugs together may actually be the LEADING cause of death.

Think about this... the primary form of “health care” and treatment actually kills more people than any disease plaguing our society... Sobering, isn’t it?

Back in 2004, a national survey sent to head and neck surgeons revealed that 45 percent of specialists had committed medical errors in their practice in the preceding six months, affecting both pediatric and adult patients. Of those errors, 37 percent had caused “major injury or harm,” and 4 percent were fatal.

More recently, a study investigating the prevalence of preventable medical mistakes found that between 2006 and 2008, there were nearly 1 million incidents among Medicare patients alone, and 1 in 10 were deadly.

In dollars and cents, these medical mistakes cost the health care system $8.9 billion.

[HuckleB]

7. "Death By Medicine" (a worthy read)

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=136

The conclusion of the piece...

"The ironic thing is that all the statistics these doctor-bashers have accumulated come from the medical literature that those bashed doctors have written themselves. Scientific medicine constantly criticizes itself and publishes the critiques for all to see. There is NOTHING comparable in the world of alternative medicine.

When errors are identified, doctors take actions to prevent them. We are constantly trying to reduce the number of medication errors, the number of unnecessary surgeries, the overuse of antibiotics, etc. It’s one thing to say that more efforts are needed. It’s something else to condemn all of modern medicine because we imperfect humans have not managed to entirely eliminate all errors.

I’ll be the first to admit that there is a great deal wrong with modern medicine, but it makes more sense to fix what is wrong than to reject the whole shebang. Alternative medicine is not a rational alternative; it’s a belief system with a very poor track record. If the doctor-bashers want to play statistics, how about comparing death rates with modern scientific medicine to death rates with alternative medicine and death rates with no medicine at all. That might really be interesting!

I think they’ve got it backwards. The biggest cause of death is not medicine, but a failure to use medicine. The blame is shared by patients who don’t follow preventive guidelines, by doctors who don’t practice the best science-based medicine, and by all those who reject science-based medicine in favor of belief-based alternatives."


As the OP notes, the health care system is working to improve care, via science and knowledge.

[wuvuj]

8. Each individual needs...

...to make their own choices? I'm taking the preventative option where I've changed my diet...take supplements, etc. There IS a lot of ongoing research showing the efficacy of various food and supplement choices...plus exercise....etc. Some of the research is not perfect double blind. It does take some serious personal "research" to find out what is most likely to work for you.

Those who just wait for something to go wrong and then take big Pharmas drugs and have surgery to fix things...are in my mind...heading down the wrong path. Fix it Daddy?

There are NEVER any guarantees...but it makes sense to me to be proactive.

Conventional medicine is also a belief system? A good bit of that belief is based on making profits....and to make those profits...you must convince people to BELIEVE.

But there are also profits to be had with alt medicine...so it is buyer beware. I try to compare and average out using various sources to find what is most likely to be effective...and then try things. I self medicate.

[HuckleB]

9. In other words, you chose to attack improvements in hospital care with a red herring...

...once that red herring was shown to be ludicrous, you go off in another direction.

Newsflash: MD's and other "convential health care professionals" promote good diet and exercise. Your supplements are not likely to have much benefit, however.

Your attack on people who have improved their lives by utilizing "BIG PHARMA" is just ridiculous, and baseless.

Further, you continue to ignore the evidence that what you follow is blind belief, and what you criticize is a system that criticizes itself. If you are utilizing "alternative medicine," it doesn't matter what research you say you do, you are still giving your money away on made up treatments that have no benefit. Further, you are giving money to a "belief system" that does nothing but continue to follow it's old hat beliefs, without challenging itself. That really says all that should need to be said, but I'm sure you'll have more red herrings to offer.

[wuvuj]

10. My posts were made to counter your...

...perpetual attacks on alternative medicine.

I now pay for and subscribe to 3-4 paper newsletters from alternative doctors who probably have a total of 70-80 yrs clinical experience in applying alternative therapies.

Do I really care if other people use alternative therapies? Not that much really. I have some experience in attempting to recommend such therapies to those in my family...they are pretty dense.

Just hate to see you and your cohorts spread misinformation.

I believe my energy is better spent improving on and applying my own knowledge to my own life rather than arguing with the retrograde.

Just happy that I have a personal choice. A parting of the ways as it were.

Carry on.

[HuckleB]

11. The OP was an attack on alternative medicine?

:rofl:

And it doesn't matter how many years someone has been peddling a scam, it's still a scam.

The question remains: Why do we arrest some people for scamming others, but let others get away with the same thing under the guise of "alternative medicine?"

And it's funny to watch your constantly shifting justifications for your posts. Why is it so common for defenders of the altmed scam to spend so much time jumping around like that?

[wuvuj]

12. We're nervous?

...

[HuckleB]

13. If you say so...

:rofl:

[Odin2005]

14. LOL!

:rofl:

[wuvuj]

15. I can do that....

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

...we be so happy!