Legislation only modestly addresses medical errors

Health care legislation largely fails to address the issue of medical errors that were detailed in a 10-year old landmark federal study, "To Err Is Human," which proposed several key solutions. The Connecticut Post reports: "Health care legislation now before Congress takes only modest steps to address a problem that is far more deadly than inadequate medical insurance — medical error. Studies show that preventable medical errors — ranging from poor sanitation to mistakes during surgery — kill four times as many people as the lack of medical insurance."

"Now, a Hearst analysis shows that the three health care reform bills under consideration by Congress also do not include key solutions long ago envisioned in "To Err Is Human" and lobbied against by the health care industry ever since. Experts agree that the proposed legislation does not address key aspects of the problem" (Nalder and Crowley, 10/16).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.