TO ERR IS HUMAN,
TO COMPENSATE DIVINE
Journal of Healing – June 30, 2004

By Mary Koch

Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one. You probably have – or a story very similar.

A woman was explaining to me her decision to retire earlier than originally planned. Last year her husband had gone to a hospital for a relatively routine surgical procedure. When she saw him in the recovery room following the surgery, she immediately realized something was wrong. His color was gray, his skin ice cold and he was bathed with perspiration. He regained consciousness just long enough to complain of severe pain and blacked out again.

The recovery room nurse dismissed the wife’s concerns. In fact the wife remembers the nurse’s attitude as "well, flippant."

Things went from bad to worse until finally another nurse recognized serious problems. Complex, emergency procedures ultimately saved the husband. His heart had been perforated during the initial surgery and had actually stopped beating at one point.

When the couple later met with the doctors involved, the surgeon cried. But it wasn’t his error that upset the wife; it was the indifference of the nurse. There’d been two errors, after all: The error in surgery and the error in detecting that error.

* * *

YOU'VE LIKELY heard a similar story because in a survey by the Harvard School of Public Health and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 42 percent of the public said they or their family members had experienced medical errors. More than half of those errors led to "serious health consequences" such as death, disability or severe pain.

The Institute of Medicine has declared that at least 44,000 Americans die each year as a result of medical errors – more than die from motor vehicle accidents (43,458), breast cancer (42,297), or AIDS (16,516).

The majority of the public in the Harvard-Kaiser survey believes malpractice lawsuits are an effective preventative for medical errors. The doctors surveyed said lawsuits are not at all effective.

Still, neither the public nor physicians consider medical errors to be a top problem in health care and medicine. Only 5 percent of physicians and 6 percent of the public identified medical errors as a major concern.

On the other hand, when the physicians were asked to name the top problems, more of them listed malpractice insurance costs and lawsuits than any other issue. Is it only me, or does there seem to be some kind of disconnect there? Doesn’t it seem reasonable to connect the dots between medical errors and malpractice lawsuits?

* * *

THE DOCTORS who claim that malpractice insurance and lawsuits are the No. 1 health care problem may be expressing their perception, but not reality.

The Congressional Budget Office and General Accounting Office both say medical malpractice insurance and claims represent, at most, only 2 percent of overall health care spending in this country. Try to connect these dots:

• The number of malpractice lawsuits filed, payouts and jury verdicts are all dropping (National Center for State Courts)
• Insurance industry earnings are soaring (Insurance Information Institute)
• Malpractice premiums are NOT going down (Chicago Tribune)
• Only 2 percent of injured people actually sue for compensation (Center for Justice Democracy).

The woman in my story and her husband are among the 98 percent. She is retiring because, like most people, she’d rather spend the gift of her husband's life with him – not in an office and definitely not in a courtroom.