The Third Cause of Death

The Third Cause of Death

I was stunned the other day when a news broadcast reported that while cancer and heart disease remain the two leading causes of death for Americans, the third is medical error. My immediate reaction was how can that be? Why aren’t people up in arms, demanding accountability and an all-out effort to remedy the problem? Maybe, I thought, the report is dramatic, shock-value reporting—until Sunday morning.

 My mother went back into the hospital for a second bout of congestive heart failure. It was obvious to my sister and I that she had gained significant weight from fluid buildup while in rehab to recover from a fracture and a blood infection. She is on a six-week course of IV antibiotics every four hours. The bags of fluid they gave her to dispense the medicine concerned me from the start, alleviated when the bag was changed to one a third the size.

Computer Records and Efficiency

We are supposedly changing to paperless medical-record filing, a more secure and efficient mode of record keeping, we are told. No matter how good the software, however, the record is only as good as the person inputting the data. I don’t know if those medical errors are more surgical in nature or general treatment errors, but I suspect the latter.

Contrary to what we believed, the rehab had no record of my mother’s previous bout of congestive heart failure the end of last year. The primary-care doctor’s office continues to send records that have inaccuracies about the prescriptions she takes.

Did this contribute to my mother’s health reversal? Probably not as her heart is in bad shape. It did cause the rehab doctor to wait longer than he should have to recognize the seriousness of the fluid buildup for her since he didn’t know the history.

Safe-Guards

Maybe there isn’t more of an outcry because people tend to trust their medical providers and may not question when things go wrong, especially for someone very ill. The illness is to blame. There are important ways to safe-guard yourself and your loved ones.

Be proactive—check your records to ensure that they are accurate every time you have a medical change. Have a healthcare proxy written up—you can get it online—and give a copy to every healthcare institution where you receive treatment. Choose someone you trust to ensure your wishes are carried out if you can’t voice them. Have that person or yourself, if able, go over any records sent to hospitals, specialists, etc., by your primary-care office for accuracy. That means keeping a list of medications and other pertinent information that you bring to all treatment providers.

Things such as an unreported allergy to a medicine, prescription that may interact badly with another, and previous condition or procedure that may have an important bearing on your current condition, when overlooked, can be deadly.