[caption id="attachment_4135" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Doctors office"]
[/caption]Research has found that doctor’s offices add to those medical mistakes that can cause harm to health or even death. 4.5 million people are victims of medical mistakes, according to Health Behavioral News, that also tells us to begin with your doctor’s office and check prescriptions and information at that level. That’s because not only are mistakes made there but the majority of patients go to doctors’ offices before going straight to emergency rooms, especially when they suspect a serious health condition.
Experts maintain to reduce medical mistakes, the doctor and patient has to be more aware of problems that can occur. Patients need to track their medications, including the side effects as well as the dosage. Some say the health care system must provide better record keeping and vigilance with coordination electronic medical records so that doctors can share information.
Medical errors account for a large number of deaths each year, with one website claiming that medical mistakes account for more deaths each year than AIDS, car accidents, breast cancer and airplane crashes combined. How accurate these findings are may need further investigation, however more and more research is pointing to medical errors as a major problem in medical care.
Kathleen Sebelius, President Barack Obama’s Health and Welfare Secretary, has this to say about the problem, as she has underlined the Administration is taking on the serious problem regarding medical errors.
“We are setting two ambitious goals. In the next three years, we want to reduce preventable injuries in hospitals by 40 percent. And we want to cut readmissions by 20 percent, targeting return hospital trips that shouldn't occur.
Achieving these goals would save 60,000 lives, protect more than 1.5 million patients from complications that would put them back in the hospital, and save $50 billion over 10 years in Medicare costs alone, as well as tens of billions more across the health-care system.
