Tom Munnecke’s Eclectica

I’ve been harping about patient safety for quite some time, harking back to the Institute of Medicine’s Report “To Err is Human” estimating between 44,000 and 88,000 deaths per year caused by preventable medical errors.

What I’d Like Homeland Security to say, and The National Health Emperor has no clothes.

During a recent trip to Germany, I noticed an that the German health ministry estimates 17,000 deaths per year due to “Behandlungsfehler” – which seems to parallel the US numbers.

The Josie King Foundation looks like it is doing something about this. I think that their grass-roots approach is laudable – and necessary. I don’t hold much hope for the industry to spontaneously fix this problem themselves.

If you go to any mom-and-pop cafe, you are likely to find the waitperson swiping a security card in their order entry terminal before entering your breakfast order. The kitchen gets a perfectly formatted, readable order, and they have a secure, accountable, efficient system.

Your local hospital, however, probably is working off nearly illegible handwritten scraps that can be faxed to the pharmacy by anyone who knows the fax number. They may have little or no security on orders that have life-or-death consequences.

Why is it that you restaurant order has such tight security and accountability whereas potentially life-critical information such as a medication order is so poorly handled?

Just another instance of the perverse incentives in our health care system.

P.S. That hospital, however, would probably have a near-perfect billing system to track every box of Kleenex they put in your room.