A short edition of fun with statistics this time, and I’m sure some will call me insensitive.
We’ve all been monitoring the situation in Minneapolis. A tragedy, disaster, or calamity, depending on your news source. The story has been the number one headline for days, and will be for several more. Vast sums are being spent to re-inspect over 100,000 other bridges around the country. Bills are being introduced locally and nationally to provide billions to upgrade transportation infrastructure.
Five people have been confirmed dead in the bridge collapse.
Five people die every 30 minutes from medical mistakes, using the oft-cited figure of 98,000 per year.
Where are the headlines? Where are the bills? Even when we do read about the problems with healthcare it has to do with access and cost, rarely about mistakes. Every now and then we’ll hear about some unfortunate situation where the wrong organ was removed, but not five or ten times an hour.
The good news is that mistakes can be avoided, often through the implementation of very simple poka yoke and mistake-proofing methods that are part of lean manufacturing. Many hospitals and health care providers are aggressively implementing lean healthcare initiatives.
If only they got the attention and support that issues with healthcare access and cost regularly receive, let alone the press, money, and political bravado that a bridge collapse has created.
Mark Graban says
Thanks for picking up on such an important topic.
“Wrong organ removed” is a particularly dramatic (and thankfully rare) error. But, other types of errors are far more frequent (drug errors, preventable infections, etc.).
Still, there’s about one “wrong site surgery” per day in the US each day. I’ll up the insensitive ante by referring to a case that was in the news this week where a guy had the wrong testicle removed, so they had to also take out the cancerous one. There’s no excuse for stuff like that happening. EVER.
The 98,000 deaths (and that number is based off “reported” errors from a study) don’t all happen at once or in the same place, so it’s not very newsworthy, is it? Nor is there dramatic video to be replayed over and over. How many errors would you suspect are NOT reported?
John Hunter says
I agree. The inability to focus on the critical items leads to us not implementing system fixes that would do the most good (the most effective way to invest societies resources). In that vein, here is a post on the leading causes of death: http://engineering.curiouscatblog.net/2007/02/19/leading-causes-of-death/ CDC’s 2004 report shows 27% heart disease, Cancer 23%, Strokes 6%, Chronic lower respiratory diseases (emphysema…) 5%, accidents 4.5%, Diabetes 3%, Alzheimer’s 2.7%, Influenza and pneumonia 2.5%.
Here is also a link to a post from last year on the American Society of Civil Engineers giving the infrastructure in the USA a “D” – didn’t result in much change in policy back then. http://engineering.curiouscatblog.net/2006/08/27/civil-engineers-usa-infrastructure-needs-improvement/
Mark Graban says
Medical mistakes rank #8 or #9 as leading cause of death, depending on which estimate you use. Either way, it’s way to high and errors are still happening, even with high profile attempts to fix the problem (attempts that seem more superficial than could be).
I hope we’ll see systemic improvement in the condition of our bridges and other infrastructure.
John Hunter says
Here is another article on the same concept (auto accident deaths, 42,642 in 2006, instead of medical errors but same idea):
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-easterbrook5aug05,0,1379980.story?coll=la-opinion-center