
When deadly medical errors are kept secret, the underlying problems that cause them don't get fixed. These errors,including hospital infections, kill an estimated 200,000 Americans each year, and cost us $51 billion. Yet they aren't required to be tracked or made public. By bringing medical errors to light, effective action can be taken to prevent them.
Consider the case of actor Dennis Quaid. His newborn twins almost died when they were injected with a massive dose of blood thinner because the adult version of the drug looked similar to the infant version and was put in the wrong bin. Quaid went public, and the hospital installed a computerized medication system to confirm the right drug and dose before it's given.
A decade ago the Institute of Medicine set national goals to cut medical errors in half by 2004, to reduce the 1.5 million medication errors that occur each year, and to ensure that doctors and nurses are competent in patient safety. Ten years later, we don't know if we're any better off. Errors aren't regularly made public, and there are few national standards to prevent them.
It's time we got serious about stopping preventable medical errors. Help us get 50,000 signatures on our petition to make error rates public so we know what to do to prevent them in the first place.
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