Hospital Deaths Go Public
Reader Comments
Quality comparison sites
One of the apparently best kept secrets on the web is ucomparehealthcare.com, which provides detailed information about volume and mortality rates (as percentages of all patients) for many major procedures, length of stay, average costs and more, and gives you the ability to compare up to 4 hospitals in one report. I find some of the comparisons about the quality of hospitals in my area very interesting (and surpising), but I've not heard much about the availability of this information until now. It seems important information for medical consumers to be aware of.
Journal name
It's the Journal of the American Medical Association (a.k.a. JAMA) not the Journal of the Medical Association as reported in your post.
hospital deaths
my name is Michelle and my fiance Bryan K. Simonson was killed by Rush Copley hospital in Aurora, Il on march 12th, 2007. He was hospitalized for pneumonia on march 6th and I stayed by his side the entire time. On march 9th I left for a short while and returned to find my fiance in intensive care, hooked up to a ventilator and iv's pumping anti-seizure medication into his body. I was told he had a heart attack and was coded for at least 15 minutes before they discovered him. Neurologists explained that he slipped into an irreversible coma and had suffered complete brain damage. I made the decision to terminate life support and he passed away very quickly. I went outside the hospital and contacted the Kane co. coroner for an independent autopsy. The results were astonishing!!!! He did not have a heart attack. He died from an opiate intoxication. They gave him an overdose of morphine. Enough to put down an elephant. At the inquest it was ruled a homicide. It is an ongoing investigation due to the hospitals attempts to cover it up. How do mistakes like this get made and how come they can't just fess up and give the families a little closure?
U.S. News's Avery Comarow has been editor of the America's Best Hospitals annual rankings since they first appeared in 1990. His reporting on clinical medicine, from the latest cholesterol guidelines to robotic surgery, has been driven by the question: What does this mean to patients? And that is the perspective he brings to his observations and commentaries on the increasing number of programs by hospitals and other healthcare providers to improve care and patient safety.
