Going to the morgue . Becare. Danger at the doctor. Heres bill hemmer. When we visited the hospital we hope to be cured and not sicker. As a society we are well aware of the Heart Disease and cancer and so on. What if one of the biggest threats is the world of medicine itself. This hour we are looking at medical errors and how are they managed and what can we do to prevent them . And a warning that some some of the things in the report may disturb you. We begin in cleveland, ohio. I thought she was amazing. Friends called them barbie and ken. Icley and chris were college sweet hearts. First came nate and then Catherine Elizabeth and then emily. There was a problem with emily. She was born with a external tumor at the base of the tail bone. And the surgeon said chris, dont worry about this. This is benign. We can remove it. Emily bounced back from the surgery and then at 18 months. She was starting to grab her side is every once in a while and wince in pain. They took her for an mri. Ch
Die of Heart Disease and 574,000 byte of cancer died of cancer. What isnt known and what the function of put the function of the hearing is about and i hope to do my best with the help of fellow senators and members of the panel is to start focusing attention on the third leading cause of death in the United States of america. And that will come as a great surprise to most people and the third leading cause of death in this country has to do with preventable medical errors in hospitals. A recent article published in the journal of Patient Safety estimates that as many as 440,000 people a year may die from preventable medical errors in hospitals. 440,000. That is more than a thousand eight each day. They die from preventable mistakes outside of the hospitals such as misdiagnosis or injury and medication. Nearly 15 years ago the institute of medicine published a report. It is a well publicized report entitled to air is human which found that as many as 98,000 people die in hospitals each
I think in a sense the discussion we are going to have today, people all over this country. In a sense that many of us included myself, have seen folks go into a hospital for one problem or another and end coming out different than it went in and sometimes dying as a result. What is widely known is the major cause of death in the United States today is the heart disease, a serious problem. The second leading cause of death is cancer. According to the 2010 cdc report, 597,000 people died of heart disease, 574,000 died of cancer. What is not widely known and in fact what the function of this hearing is about and i hope to do my best with the help of my fellow senators and members of the panel is to start focusing attention on the third leading cause of death in the United States of america and that will come as the great surprise and the third leading cause of death in this country has to do with preventable medical errors in hospitals. Recent article published in the journal of Patient
I want to start by noting that the committee has been particularly supportive as the staff and the oversight investigation subcommittee for their work on this issue and their work with our agency we consider it to be a Real Partnership and we are very grateful for this committees support. We have received a number of referrals from this committee and we appreciate your confidence and ability to work with the employees that your office refers. So thats one thing. Its already happening. We are doing everything that we possibly can. Weve set up a priority system and we free allocated staff to handle the va employee claims. But as the numbers increase its a very hard to keep up. We were at capacity before. In the retaliation cases now it exceeds 130, and the number as i mentioned continues to increase pretty much daily. We are an agency that has 120 employees more or less. We have jurisdiction for the statute for the reemployment rights act and we are working now on a demonstration for the
I appreciate what the secretary is doing with the restructuring and coming up with a strong internal audit system. However i must express that i am skeptical about how that is going to work. We have the whistleblower protection act but its not enforced. My concern burst of office we have heard so much testimony in thandthe committee about a cultf secrecy and culture of retaliation, and retaliation is a huge deterrent to hearing the complaints. So my first question is to you we heard theres been retaliation against employees. I encountered there is retaliation against patients who might feel they have a complaint against a facility. Are you aware of any retaliation against patients or veterans . I think thats a really important question. Im not aware of any retaliation in part because my Agency Jurisdiction is for employees to come forward with retaliation complaints or disclosures of waste, fraud, abuse or Health Safety problems. Someone could come to us if they thought that a patient