Gyroscopic Investing

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Actually, the leading cause of death is life. 

... Mountaineer

I've learned never to trust a doctor, nurse, or health institution over my years. Everything must be verified and if there is any doubt one should vote with their feet and run away.

Mountaineer wrote: Actually, the leading cause of death is life. 

No, its ignorance, stupidity and/or corruption.

Seriously, why don't you just off yourself if you've got that mental attitude.  Jesus won't forgive you? 

Reub wrote: I've learned never to trust a doctor, nurse, or health institution over my years. Everything must be verified and if there is any doubt one should vote with their feet and run away.

Great minds think alike! 

Oddly enough, the forced introduction of EHRs, "meaningful use" documentation, quality controls here there and everywhere, etc etc ad infinitum did nothing to solve the medical error problem.  In fact, they've made it worse.

The problem is that the "blame the doctor" strategy has not worked in the past and will not work now.  Medical staff are operating in an extremely complex and funding-starved environment.  Complex systems + human = risk of error.  It CAN be addressed but not by any of the methods currently being applied.

And when I say "funding starved" I mean it.  Money is swirling all over the place but it's not going to the right places.  If you'll recall I've explained in the past how pharmaceuticals and the various administrative bodies are the ones scooping it all up.  I see hospitals and practices cutting more and more corners every day to save $$.  Each new corner cut adds to the systemic risk.

The third leading cause of death in house fires is firemen. And their ignorance, stupidity and corruption.

And the leading cause of divorce is marriage! 

MachineGhost wrote:No, its ignorance, stupidity and/or corruption.

You mean "it's".

Desert wrote:

Mountaineer wrote: Actually, the leading cause of death is life. 

... Mountaineer

That's actually true, and a pretty interesting philosophical discussion.  I'd put it slightly different:  the leading cause of death is birth.

Before birth, or an afterbirth? 

... M

I never even heard of nephritis so I had to look it up. I guess it's inflammation of the kidneys and a primary cause is an allergic reaction to antibiotics or other medications or long term use of medications. So that one doesn't look so good for the practice of medicine either.

BearBones wrote: The third leading cause of death in house fires is firemen. And their ignorance, stupidity and corruption.

That's a very slippery slope if we start allowing any and all "do-gooders" to allow whatever action is necessary as justification in the holy sancrosanct name of "helping others".  There would be little to no practical accountability, tons of bureaucratic incompetence and conspiratorial cover-ups.  Oh, wait...

The point of transparency about human-inflicted negatives upon society is to shine bright light so that we can work towards eliminating those said negatives, not throw our hands up and/or justify it as acceptable "collateral damage".

In the case of medicine, though, I'm afraid the Soviet-style Command and Control model has completely failed and depositing more bullshit on top of pre-existing bullshit just isn't going to work.  We need real free market competition so that everyone along the entire fucking chain is held accountable to the consumer.

Still think that this is a solveable problem using methods employed by the airline industry and the military.  Those are complex systems too, but they've figured out that simply blaming everything on "pilot error" is non-productive, so they've developed checklists and ways of having multiple levels of safety.  The idea is to set things up so that an error has to get by not just one person, but two or three.

Some hospitals are trying to do this, but the Obama era and Medicare mandates are really making things difficult, as is the general push toward cost cutting.  For example:  there's a technical procedure in my area that doesn't involve physicians, but that is very critical to get right because decisions having to do with brain resection are made based on it.  The usual standard for years is to have two qualified people present during the procedure.  Due to hospital staffing cuts, there was a period when only one person was present, and sure enough there were errors (thankfully caught in time to not affect surgical procedures).  One meeting later, we're back to two people and no more errors.