Hospitals Fail to Report Doctor Incompetence: The person most likely to kill you is your doctor."

'The person most likely to kill you is not a relative or a friend, or
a mugger or a burglar or a drunken driver. The person most likely to
kill you is your doctor."
---- Vernon Coleman, author - What Doctors Don't Tell You

Gangsters in Medicine
By Thomas Smith
NewsWithViews.com

Disease in America.
Some of the economics of Medicine.
Exceptions to the rule.
Takeover of the American medical Association.
Treatment instead of cure.
Insurance fraud.
Government coercion in medical practice.
What to do.

http://www.whale.to/a/smith25.html

Doctors Are The Third Leading Cause of Death in the US, Causing
225,000 Deaths Every Year
The terrorists killed 3000 people on 9-11. American doctors kill that
many people every day in the US.
This article was published in the Journal of the American Medical
Association (JAMA)
http://www.relfe.com/A06/doctor_medical.html
Always remember. THE DOCTOR IS YOUR EMPLOYEE.

Hospitals Fail to Report Doctor Incompetence
Public Citizen contends that under-reporting is not only because
hospitals are failing to report sanctions, but also because hospitals
often fail to take any action against controversial practitioners.

For the millions of poor held hostage by unethical providers, stamping
out corruption in health care is a matter of life and
death. ...Corruption deprives people of access to health care and is
one reason why so often increased spending does not correlate with
improved health outcomes. ...THEFT, BRIBERY AND EXTORTION ROB MILLIONS
OF PROPER HEALTHCARE, SAYS GLOBAL CORRUPTION REPORT 2006....
Healthcare: What's So Wrong with Having Government Protection?
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/wattree/2009/08/healthcare-whats-so-wrong-
with.php

Hospitals Fail to Report Doctor Incompetence
Study Finds That Few Hospitals Report When Doctors Are Harmful to
Patients
The hospitals aren't doing their job disciplining doctors."
By LISA STARK and OLIVIA HALLIHAN
May 27, 2009

One would assume that a surgeon whose license had been suspended in
Oklahoma and revoked in Texas would not be allowed to operate in
Hawaii. But that's what happened in 2001 when the surgeon used a
screwdriver in place of a titanium rod for a spine procedure. The
patient was left paralyzed and later died, according to a report
released today.

In a report published Wednesday by Public Citizen, the consumer
advocacy group alleges that hospitals are not properly using the
database designed to protect patients from physicians who have
histories of medical incompetence.These kinds of cases should be
flagged more often, according to the consumer advocacy group Public
Citizen.

In its report, Public Citizen argues that hospitals are not properly
using the database designed to protect patients from physicians who
have histories of medical incompetence. The group argues that
hospitals are failing to discipline and accurately report sanctions
taken against physicians.

"As a patient, if you had a choice to go to a hospital that had never
disciplined a doctor in 20 years compared to one that has, you might
think twice about going to the hospital that had never disciplined a
doctor," Sid Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research
Group, said today.

In setting up the database, called the National Practitioner Databank,
nearly two decades ago, the government had predicted 5,000 reports on
doctors would be filed each year. The health care industry had
predicted the database would house 10,000 annual reports. Despite the
forecasts, only an average of 650 annual reports find their way into
the system.

"It's cultural," David Swankin, president and CEO of Citizen Advocacy
Center, said today. "Nobody likes turning anybody in. People just
don't like doing it, doctors don't like doing it. There's a culture in
medicine that anybody can make a mistake.

"The premise that the number of reports received by the National
Practitioner Databank correlates to jeopardized patient care is
inaccurate," the association said in a statement. "Hospitals are
actively involved in a wide variety of efforts to continuously improve
care and talk publicly about the care we provide."

Meantime, the doctor who practiced in Hawaii in 2001 was not monitored
by his peers during surgery despite the earlier problems in Oklahoma
and Texas. In 2007, the report, titled "Hospitals Drop the Ball on
Physician Oversight," found, nearly half of the country's hospitals
had not reported any sanction against a physician's hospital
privileges.

To compile the data, Public Citizen said it reviewed studies by the
Office of Inspector General, work by the Citizen Advocacy Center,
medical journal articles and recommendations from an October 1996
national meeting on hospital under-reporting.

Public Citizen contends that under-reporting is not only because
hospitals are failing to report sanctions, but also because hospitals
often fail to take any action against controversial practitioners.

"Nobody wants to be on a list that's available to other hospitals and
to other state licensing boards," Swankin said. "Nobody wants to be on
that kind of a list."

Among recommendations compiled in a letter to Health and Human
Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the Public Citizen Health
Research Group calls for Congress to enact a law that would fine
hospitals for failure to report substandard doctors.

But Jean Marie Rocha, vice president of clinical affairs for the
Hospital Association of Rhode Island, said that the "biggest incentive
for hospitals and physicians is to know they're providing the best
care for hospitals and patients." Instead of fining hospitals, Rocha
said, reporting to the data bank should "be done on a voluntary
rate."

Rhode Island hospitals reported more to the data bank than any other
state, according to the report, with about 19 percent of its hospitals
in that state failing to ever have filed reports.

Report Says Hospitals Find Ways to Avoid Reporting
The process of hospital peer review has been called "one of the
pillars of quality assurance in the United States" by the Journal of
the American Medical Association, according to the Public Citizen
report.

But hospitals across the country have devised new ways to avoid
reporting, according to a medical board member who requested anonymity
in e-mails to Public Citizen earlier this year. That person said
hospitals dodge the rules by having physicians take a "leave of
absence" or changing their bylaws.

"About half the hospitals in the country have never reported one
doctor out of the couple hundred thousand doctors that are on the
staffs of those hospitals," Public Citizen's Wolfe said. "It's just
not believable. The only answer is the hospitals aren't doing their
job disciplining doctors."

The allure of profit also means hospitals may fail to report things
they should, the report says.

A 2002, an FBI raid on California's Redding Medical Center found two
physicians had conducted unnecessary cardiac procedures on more than
600 patients since 1995. Because of the revenue generated by the
surgeries, the physician was able to "block hospital peer review,"
according to the FBI affidavit.

Reporting varies by state, according to Public Citizen. More than 70
percent of hospitals in North and South Dakota, for instance, never
reported information for the database, compared to Rhode Island's 19
percent that did not.

The Public Citizen report indicates there are several ways to rebuild
hospital peer review in the United States, making it more beneficial
and accountable for patients.

In addition to fining hospitals, the group would like to give the
federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services the authority to
sanction hospitals and physicians who do not complete peer reviews.

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Antworten

Witziges Raetsel (27.10.2009 19:18)