Article: How to Stop Hospitals From Killing Us by Marty Makary. The Wall Street Journal. September 21, 2012.
Key Ideas: Medical mistakes kill enough people each week to fill four jumbo jets. As often as 40 times a week a surgeon operates on wrong body part. 20-30% of all medications, tests, and procedures are unnecessary. So states the author, a surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
To confront this situation the he proposes five reforms (1) An informational dashboard including infections, readmission rates, and the volume of the type of surgery performed. (2) Anonymous surveys of doctors, nurses, and technicians at hospitals (3) Cameras to record procedures (4) Doctor's notes that are open to patients. (5) Elimination of the increasingly common requirement that patients agree to refrain from saying anything negative about the physician.
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