Monday, January 13, 2014
Power Corrupts
For many years, the health care system generally and the
medical profession in particular was left free to manage its own affairs. “Doctor knows best” was a guiding principle
and nobody wanted to be accused of interfering in the practice of medicine or in
the doctor-patient relationship.
The result was the conferring of great power, and as Baron
Acton observed a century and a quarter ago, power corrupts.
That principle was vividly illustrated in an article
appearing in the January 11 edition of the Omaha World Herald and headlined “For
‘never events,’ stray surgery items are disturbingly common.” The article, over the by-line of local
columnist Matthew Hansen, was occasioned by a lawsuit brought by a lady in whom
a fluid-filled surgical glove had been left following surgery at an Omaha
hospital.
‘Never events’ are events that should never happen, like
leaving foreign objects in patients after surgery. The most common such items are sponges used
to soak up blood. Hansen quoted a number
of apparently authoritative estimates of how often sponges are left in patients
in US hospitals and the numbers ranged from 500 to 6,000 per year.
According to the article, techniques involving bar codes and
tiny radio-frequency tags are available to prevent this from happening. Using them. the Mayo Clinic has not lost a
sponge in four years. Indiana University
Health System hasn’t lost one in five years.
The cost is about $10 per procedure but no hospital in Omaha
is using the technology. I consider that
to be inexcusable negligence attributable to the power granted to those
institutions. Corruption in the sense of
an erosion of standards seems like a suitable word to describe the condition.
