Your Health ;
; Hospital errors cause 100,000 deaths yearly.
; These are preventable deaths.
; What’s wrong, and can it be made right?
By Katharine Greider
American hospitals are capable of great medical feats, but
they also are plagued by
daily errors that cost lives.
No one knows that better than Ilene Corina. In
the 1990s, she saw a medical team rescue her fragile
premature newborn, but
she also endured the death
of another son—a healthy
3-year-old—when, she says,
doctors failed to attend to
complications from a routine tonsillectomy.
When a family member
dies because of a hospital’s
mistake, “what do we care
about the excellence in the
system?” says Corina, 51, of
Long Island, N. Y., founder
and president of a patient
safety advocacy group. “We
have to voice our anger
about the problems we see
in the health care system.”
Corina had already joined
the patient safety movement
when, in 1999, the Institute
of Medicine’s now-famous
report, To Err Is Human,
burst into public conscious-
ness with its startling an-
nouncement: Each year as
many as 100,000 Americans
die in hospitals from pre-
ventable medical mistakes.
