But not every hospital lives up to the highest standards. In fact, some are downright death traps, filled with unsafe practices, careless staff and unsanitary conditions. In an influential 2010 report, the United States Department of Health and Human Services reported that 180,000 patients a year die from infections, surgical mistakes and other medical harm experienced while staying in a hospital.
That’s only counting Medicare patients, by the way. As for the others, well, no one knows about them, because there are no quantifiable reports aggregated about national hospital errors, omissions and fatalities. Most incidents are quietly swept under the rug, of concern only to the immediate families of those unfortunate enough to have experienced a poor standard of care.
In fact, Rosemary Gibson, an author and patient safety advocate, notes that more than 2 million people will die from some form medical harm in this decade. While not all of these incidents occurred in hospitals, it’s a safe bet that a large percentage of them were in the confines of a medical facility.
You Have a Choice
Fortunately, unless you’re an emergency patient, you have a choice in which hospital you’ll attend. There are any number of ratings services, ranging from the formal evaluations of state medical boards to those created by commercial publications like Consumer Reports and U.S. News. There are even online services like Yelp that will tell you about how you can expect to be treated during your hospital stay based on prior patient experiences.