Newsroom
01/13/2006
YOUR OPINION
Mistake crisis steady
Editor: The "malpractice crisis" might be over for doctors, but the patient safety crisis remains a plague.
Every day, from 121 to 542 hospital patients die due to preventable medical mistakes. Regardless of which studies you believe, those numbers make medical mistakes a leading cause of death in America - right up there with heart disease and cancer.
Sadly, the medical community has done little or nothing to address the epidemic of misdiagnosis, delayed diagnosis, wrong-site surgeries, medication errors and other preventable mistakes that claim the lives of hundreds of Americans every day.
I know because a misdiagnosis by three different doctors caused my wife, Maureen, to die of breast cancer at 42. I have made it my life's mission to end the misdiagnosis of breast cancer.
The medical community's solution is to punish severely injured patients by limiting the amount of money a jury can award for pain and suffering. Under the limits being sought by doctors, the value of my wife's life would have been "capped" at $250,000.
Instead of promoting a snake-oil remedy like caps, doctors should be working to eliminate the mistakes that cause lawsuits in the first place. Injured patients and their families shouldn't have to pay twice.
BILL THIEL
WEST PITTSTON
