The Institute of Medicine has recently turned a harsh spotlight on the question of medical errors and patient safety, from drug interactions and allergies to wrong-site surgery. It has issued reports spanning several years documenting hundreds of thousands of illnesses, injuries and deaths that it deems "preventable." But one key player in keeping patients safe, over which the health-care system has no control, say medical experts, is the patient himself.
"The single most important way you can help to prevent errors is to be an active member of your health-care team," says a guide by the American Academy of Family Physicians.
As we were preparing to make LifeKey available to the public, we gained some unprecedented insights into what the scope of the problem is in healthcare today. Here are some of our mind-boggling findings.
This is what a hospital President and CEO has to say …
"American medical care may be the marvel of the world, but hospitals are dangerous places to be, especially when you are sick. The Institute of Medicine published a report in 1999 entitled, To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System. This report projected that tens of thousands of Americans die each year from medical errors in their care, and hundreds of thousands suffer from non-fatal injuries, which a truly high quality health care system could prevent. If the IOM is correct, medical errors may be the fifth leading cause of death in the United States."
Authur J. Simpson
President and CEO of Newport Hospital
American Medical Association …
An analysis published in The Journal of the American Medical Association in 2001 concluded that medical errors are a major concern … This study calculated that one patient per 10,000 hospital admissions dies due to medical error.
Department of Health and Human Services …
According to the Department of Health and Human Services in a 2005 report, the following costs could be avoided if a patient's complete medical history were available when they went to the ER:
20% of all lab tests and x-rays are unnecessary
1 out of 7 hospital stays could be avoided, and
44,000 - 98,000 lives are lost each year because of drug interactions.
Department of Health and Human Services
New England Journal of Medicine …
"One in 50 heart attack victims are mistakenly sent home by emergency room doctors."
Researchers from New England Medical Center reported in the
New England Journal of Medicine in April 2000
Parade magazine article …
"The system is stretched beyond capacity. That can lead to mistakes… Sometimes less-experienced doctors treat life-threating illnesses. Diagnoses are missed or delayed."
"Over 225,000 people die from medical malpractice related injuries each year, and according to a 1999 study, nearly half of these are from emergency room errors."
To Survive Your Local ER
October 29, 2006 Parade
This is what a cardiologist has to say…
"An all too frequent and potentially life threatening handicap is my inability to access critical health care information in a timely fashion. Details I need to make decisions within minutes can literally take days or weeks to obtain."
Daniel L. West MD, FACC
West Shore Cardiology
This is what an ER doctor has to say…
"It is commonplace for patients to present to the ED without any real knowledge of their own prior medical conditions, medications, allergies, prior diagnostic testing other than "I have heart disease" or "I have diabetes" or "I take the little blue pill twice a day".
"In the fast-paced world of ED, critical decisions are often made in the first few minutes and ED physicians are often faced with the dilemma of having to make a choice without knowing everything they would like to."
"I see LifeKey as a simple, portable, universally acceptable way of bridging the ED information gap. Its immediate impact would be to quickly allow any ED provider to gain access to the necessary information regarding a critical patient allowing real-time informed medical decision making."
Neal M. Shipley, MD, FACEP
Chair, Emergency Medicine North General Hospital
New York, NY
LifeKey Provides The Most Complete And Comprehensive Personal Medical Record You'll Find - Anywhere!
Most people have more than one physician. You have a primary care physician, as well as one or more specialists. You may also have changed physicians, and someone that you are no longer seeing may have your old medical records.
LifeKey compiles all your medical records into one place. This provides an ER doctor the only place to get your complete medical history.
How important is your medical history in an emergency? Picture a heart patient's medical evaluation in an emergency as a three legged stool. Each leg supports the stool; in this case the plan of treatment. The three legs represent the three criteria that an ER doctor must use to make an accurate assessment and devise a plan of treatment. They represent:
1. A physical examination of the patient,
2. Any tests such as labs, x-rays, and EKGs and,
3. The patient's medical history.
If one leg is missing or shorter then the rest, the stool tips over. So does the effectiveness of the treatment plan if the doctor doesn't have an accurate understanding of the heart patient's medical history.
The problem with the current healthcare system is that during an emergency, it is virtually impossible to get accurate medical histories from any of the doctors who have seen the patient. So, an ER physician must rely on a patient's memory or that of a relative for the information that is critical for their care. And, many times that memory is poor and the information provided is incomplete.
Study
Studies have proven that having your medical records available in the early minutes of an emergency will dramatically improve the accuracy of the diagnosis, reduce medical treatment costs, and improve the overall quality of care that a patient receives.
The lack of this information can negatively affect the quality of care that you receive in the ER.
This problem becomes evident when you examine the results of a recent study that shows the difference in medical treatment when a patient has their medical history available when they enter the ER. (This sudy was performed by an independent group that has a stake in this marketspace and should not be relied on as authoritative but only to give insights to the scope of the problem. We recommend that you rely on your personal physicians' recommendation on the value of LifeKey.)
The correct initial diagnosis increased from 45% up to 87% when the ER doctor had the patient's medical history.
On average, physicians ordered $800.00 to $1,200.00 less in tests when they had the patient's medical history. Ordered tests were more specific and related to the final diagnosis more precisely.
Treatments and medications were more precise and specific for patients with their medical histories available in the ER.
Finally, unnecessary admissions to the hospital decreased by 42% and inappropriate discharges decreased by 20% for patients whose medical history was available to the ER doctor.
