Cautious Patient
1458 Campbell Road, Suite 150, Houston, TX 77055; 713-461-2822
Patient Always First, a medical non-profit organization founded by Dr. Oliver in 2004, formed Cautious Patient as an outreach committee to continue to educate and empower patients in their quest for quality healthcare, and specifically to address the following goals:
- To help people understand the dangers and inadequate care that occur in our healthcare system—but that there are ways they can participate to make it better;
- To help patients learn to interact more in the doctor-patient relationship;
- To help people find and understand for themselves the medical information they need in order to take care of their diseases;
- To help people find and get their preventive medicine needs met; and
- To be a support system for those who have had unnecessary tragedies as a result of dangerous or inadequate medical care.
We stand with others like the Institute of Medicine,1 the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, the National Patient Safety Foundation, Secretary of State Clinton,2 and President Obama,2,3 in recognizing that close to 100,000 patients die in U.S. hospitals every year from medical errors—more than those who die from auto accidents, AIDS, and breast cancer combined. This was first reported by the Institute of Medicine in 1999; since that time there have been hundreds of articles and medical studies on the topic. Another 99,000 U.S. patients die each year from infections that they acquire in the hospital.4 And many more die or are injured by medical treatment as patients while not in the hospital.
This is truly an epidemic, and it’s clear that U.S. lawmakers know of the problem. But this killer, unlike auto accidents, AIDS, and breast cancer, has been truly silent. There is no national “poster child” for this epidemic. While we might see public service announcements on using seatbelts, practicing safe sex, and getting mammograms, we see nothing about the epidemic of deaths from medical errors, and how we can protect ourselves and our families from that fate. It appears either that there’s no way that the government knows for you to avoid being a victim of this, or they haven’t been pushed hard enough to make you clearly aware of this dangerous situation and offer solutions.
Those who have lost a loved one by mismanaged medical care are devastated forever that this can occur, and they didn’t even to know to watch out for it. Part of their healing comes from reaching out and trying to keep this from happening to other families. Part of their pain comes from seeing that the average American doesn’t believe that our medical system produces such an incredibly alarming number of medical error deaths, so people can’t offer them their sympathy and understanding. And suffering a loss, and then not being believed, is heartbreaking.
Carolyn Oliver, M.D., J.D. formed this Cautious Patient committee because of what she perceived over the course of 30 years in medical practice to be a serious lack of responsibility on the part of some physicians to do the right thing and put the patient’s interests before their own; the patients’ inability to see what was happening to them; and the belief that warning people and encouraging them to participate more in their medical care is the right thing to do.
Jennifer Dingman is an advisory member of this committee. She lost her mother to mismanaged medical care in 1995, and has been a tireless advocate for patients since then, establishing PULSE as a support group for families who have lost someone to medical error. Bill Thiel is another advisory member. He lost his wife, Maureen, in 1998 to a delayed diagnosis of breast cancer, even though she had been going to the doctor with a breast lump for several years. He established Maureen’s Mission to legislate for better care for women with breast lumps and breast cancer, and to educate women and their families about what to do so they get appropriately diagnosed when they have a breast lump.
For more information, contact us at info@cautiouspatient.org.
- “As many as 98,000 Americans die in hospitals each year as a result of medical errors.” Institute of Medicine. To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System. Linda T. Kohn, Janet M. Corrigan, and Molla S. Donaldson, eds. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2000, p.26.
- “We all know the statistic from the landmark 1999 Institute of Medicine report that as many as 98,000 deaths in the United States each year result from medical errors.” Clinton, Hillary Rodham and Barack Obama. “Making Patient Safety the Centerpiece of Medical Liability Reform.” New England Journal of Medicine 354(21) (2006): 2205-2208.
- “Each year, 100,000 Americans die because of medical errors …”
Obama, Barack. “Affordable Health Care for All Americans: The Obama-Biden Plan.” Journal of the American Medical Association 300(16) (2008): 1927-1928.
- http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dhqp/hai.html, accessed July 26, 2008.