[MD] Low quality health care

[Platt Holden]

Hi All,

>From the pages of the UK newspaper "The Independent" which I've been told 
by several of our British contributors is reliable:

"NHS gives wrong treatment to 500 hospital patients a week
By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
Published: 11 July 2007

"Hospital staff gave the wrong treatment to the wrong patient on almost 
25,000 occasions last year, leading to deaths, serious injury and long-
term harm, official figures show. Errors in identifying patients led to at 
least 500 a week getting the wrong operation the wrong drugs or diagnostic 
tests, the National Patient Safety Agency said.

"No breakdown of the figures was available yesterday to show how many had 
died or been seriously harmed and how many escaped injury. The agency 
admitted the total could be much higher because many incidents went 
unreported.

"Almost 3,000 of the incidents are estimated to have occurred because of 
confusion over wristbands used to identify patients. An investigation 
found that the colour red on a wristband had eight different meanings in 
different NHS trusts, ranging from "allergic to penicillin" to "does not 
have English as a first language"."

The full article is available at:

http://news.independent.co.uk/health/article2753392.ece

To my U.S. friends: I don't know about you,  but it doesn't look to me 
that universal health care is the panacea for all our system's ills that 
some make it out to be.

Platt
 

Platt