Dad’s last trip alive was to the hospital. He’d had a fall, and the retirement village called the ambulance before I could get there. At the hospital they gave him an injection because his heartbeat was irregular - as it had been for years. Two hours later he was dead of a haemorrhagic stroke, caused by the drug, which was totally contra-indicated for him after his previous stroke.
The death stats clearly show how dangerous hospitals can be. They’re great for some things like accidents, but when they start administering drugs at random they’re lethal places.
Here’s the basis for the death rate in Australian hospitals. 228 (28000*.166*.049) out of 28,000 admissions died because of an ‘adverse event’ at the hospitals.
“A review of the medical records of over 14 000 admissions to 28 hospitals in New South Wales and South Australia revealed that 16.6% of these admissions were associated with an “adverse event”, which resulted in disability or a longer hospital stay for the patient and was caused by health care management; 51% of the adverse events were considered preventable. In 77.1% the disability had resolved within 12 months, but in 13.7% the disability was permanent and in 4.9% the patient died.”
This ties in closely with a Johns Hopkins Study in the U.S. indicating 250,000 deaths from medical errors, ten time Australia, but 12 times the population.
“Analyzing medical death rate data over an eight-year period, Johns Hopkins patient safety experts have calculated that more than 250,000 deaths per year are due to medical error in the U.S. Their figure, published May 3 in The BMJ, surpasses the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's third leading cause of death—respiratory disease, which kills close to 150,000 people per year.“
