The Most Shocking Mistakes Hospitals Don’t Want You to Know
About
They
include foreign objects left in the body, air embolisms and giving patients the
wrong blood type
Is it somehow unfair that the public knows that one airline – Malaysia Air – flew two of the planes in our most recent commercial aviation tragedies? After all, the exact cause of either catastrophe isn’t yet known, and it’s not clear that Malaysia Air was at fault in either. The airline flies roughly 91,000 flights per year safely; no Malaysian Air flight had been involved in a fatal accident since 1995. Is it really fair to name the airline?
I suspect your reaction – almost everyone’s reaction — to this
line of thought is roughly, “Fair? Who cares about fair? Of course we have a
right to know.” Perhaps only a lobbyist for the American Hospital Association
(AHA) could have any sympathy for suppressing the name of a company that has a
terrible accident. The AHA has just successfully employed a similar “fairness”
argument in convincing the Obama Administration to eliminate government
disclosure of the worst medical mistakes committed by hospitals.
