Good points made here, but they left out one thing, technology and it’s improper use can kill you too. I would almost guess we could go as high as around 50% to find many of the errors stemmed right here. I love technology and what it does, but there are those who don’t and those that resist and that is danger to all, because if you have been a frequent reader here, you can plainly see that it is not going away anytime soon, and also I write about what I call “intrusive” technology, and yes that is around too with risk management of the insurance agencies driving much of it for better algorithms driven towards profits. One such example might be the human audit trail device soon to appear on the scene and once released will the owners be able to turn down big offers of money from those who will view it as a tool to use for risk management, probably not, most do not, and then this non FDA regulated device enters into a realm, probably outside of what it was originally designed for to help individuals learn more about their body and healthcare. It’s the way stuff works and nobody is minding the shop.
One item mentioned here as a major killer of seniors on Medicare is sepsis. This group is having meetings talking about what can be done and you can read more here. You can also read about what Cook Medical is doing with an interview I did here with medicated catheters. One of my favorites though in the area of sepsis is what Vanderbilt University is doing with technology, and others might want to take a look and see what their technology solution is. They just went out and did it with some very useful Microsoft Silverlight technology, easier for the clinicians to view and see problems immediately. Visuals are very important today in healthcare, so the more we can capture instantly in a visual the better chances we will have for a quick and accurate analysis process. BD
Hard hat area....Healthcare jumping out with Server 2008 and all the updated components for the application to track Sepsis, a systemic inflammatory response to infection which can progress to circulatory system dysfunction, multiple organ failure, and eventually death. Severe sepsis is common, with over 750,000 cases diagnosed in the United States each year. It is the tenth leading cause of death worldwide, killing approximately one person every minute....enable Windows Activation Services when installing Server 2008 on a 64 bit machine...good case study....BD 
What you don’t know today can kill you and the top healthcare facilities I can almost bet are big users of technology, no doubt. Part of the technology issues too are way too many interfaces for the software that is used today, one doctor working on staff at 2 hospitals with different systems, which require training and a learning curve, and then let’s say he has his own system back at the office, well, you get the picture there, lack of standards and too complicated, which can also contribute to errors. BD
If all hospitals performed as well as 5-star facilities, as ranked by an independent healthcare ratings company, 237,420 U.S. Medicare patient deaths could have been prevented between 2005 and 2007. That's the upshot of a new study that finds you have a 70 percent lower chance of dying at a facility that is top-ranked by HealthGrades compared to its lowest-ranked ones across 17 procedures and conditions that were the reasons for the hospital visits.
More than half of the Medicare patient deaths were associated with four conditions: sepsis (a systemic response to infection), pneumonia, heart failure and respiratory failure. Researchers have long documented how hospitals can kill you. Blame is placed on everything from exhausted doctors and staff to antibiotic-resistant microbes.
Related Reading: EHR Adoption Remains Off in the Distance – Getting way to complicated
Death rate 70 percent lower at top hospitals - Health care- msnbc.com
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