Read It!

There is a fabulous “must read” six-part article in this week’s (07.18) U.S. News & World Report, titled “Saving Lives: Hospitals Have Signed on to a Six-part Plan to Avoid a Multitude of Unnecessary Deaths.” (Many of the Rx’s are quite simple, amazingly enough.)

Hospitals can respond to the 100,000 or more people they murder annually! This article describes how. It is long … LONG LONG … overdue.

Hats Waaaaay Off to Patron Saint & Mt Rushmore candidate Dr Donald Berwick, who gets an enormous share of the credit for hammering away at this issue. The “hear no evil, see no evil” AMA and various hospital associations join GM’s Rick Wagoner in the Bozos Hall of Shame on this one.

More “hats off’ to Pennsylvania for becoming the first state to, according to USA Today (07.13), “publicly report the toll hospital infections take.” (Numbering 11,600 in PA last year, and killing 1,500 people—or 4 full 747s as I like to translate it.) Again, the industry’s stalwarts have fought like the NRA to derail such transparency. (Of course fatal gun accidents—including murders?—pale by comparison to hospital malfeasance.)

Action item: Demand action—Radical Action—from your doctor & hospital.

Tom Peters posted this on July 14, 2005, in Healthcare.
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