How Safe is Your Hospital?  John C. Goodman  4/16/2011 12:01:00
AM - John C. Goodman  Hospitals are dangerous places to be. At
least if you are a patient. My colleagues Biff Jones and Pam
Villarreal and I estimate that as many as 187,000 patients die
every year for some reason other than the medical condition
which caused them to seek care. We also estimate there are 6.1
million injuries caused by the health care system, including
hospital acquired infections that afflict one in every 20
hospital patients.  We estimate the economic cost of this loss
of life and limb at between $393 billion and $958 billion in
2006 dollars. These amounts are equal to between 18% and 45% of
all health care spending.  Roughly speaking, every time the
health care system spends a dollar healing us, it causes up to
45 cents worth of harm. Of course, the system also does a lot of
good. In fact the good is many, many times greater than the
harm. Still, the cost of adverse medical events is so huge we
would be foolish not to try to fi