Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Medical Errors

How to protect Ourselves against Medical Errors? Can doctors be trusted?

In Singapore many warnings have been given to GPs to stop fancy treatments to naive customers, but many due to the lucrative money just keep on to their business as usual and growing wealthier while many victims are crying foul play. Who is at fault? The doctors or the naive customers? The doctors have the licenses to practice while the customers have the right to choose.

The real causes of medical errors is GREED. Greed manifest itself in many ways:
1. Profit-Sharing Practice. -- In India, and many modern countries where a proliferation of commercialized institutions has led to intense competition, dubious practices (better known among insiders as "cut practice") have been noted. It's a profit-sharing practice, in which the doctor gets a cut (of as much as 20-30%) from the laboratory, nursing home or chemist he refers the patient to.

The same practice is said to be happening here too.There are some clinics here which practice fee-splitting, where their is a sharing of fees when a patient is referred to another doctor. Keep your eyes and ears open when you are seeking second opinions from another doctors for your condition. This is unethical and is not allowed under the Medical Ethical Code. Even this unhealthy practice is ignore by many GPs. GREED is dangerous!

Over medication.
In Japan and many more modern countries, which has highest per-capital drug consumption in the world, it has been ascertained that there is greed and manipulation of the medication system by doctors who receive fixed fees for the drugs they prescribe.
This lower the cost of medicines , but reimbursement from the Japanese government remains the same. The difference forms the doctors' profit margin.
In the Indian experience, pharmaceutical companies push their drugs on doctors, who then prescribe way too many drugs which are often more expensive than their available alternatives.

Unnecessary Tests & Procedures.
The American Medical Association once conducted a survey, in which 75% of doctors admitted that they order more tests that are strictly necessary at times.

Patients- Cramming.
Patients seeking treatment at outpatients department wait for hours for their turn, only to get 2 or 3 minutes with the doctor.
Over a 7-hour period, the 12 or 13 doctors at the department see between 120 and 180 patients daily and that means each doctor can spend only a few minutes with each patient. How much can a patient en-quire from the few minutes? Your guess is as good as my guess. Nothing.
The acute shortage of capable and patients-sensitive doctors means patients are not thoroughly examined and in some cases, serious ailments go undetected.

Pressure to fill up beds and vacant beds as soon as possible.
Some hospitals boast of having consultants, who in reality, merely LEND THEIR NAMES to a spectrum of hospitals and end up spending just 1 hour in each of them. What the consultant does is rent a room in the hospital to see patients (who are admitted in the hospital and have to visit the consultant frequently). The visits are charged and the consultant shares the patients' fees with the hospital. Hospitals resort to this because of pressure from the management to fill up hospital beds, and vacant them as soon as possible. Scare tactics often work for the naive patients. Many patients who go to doctors are often ignorant, either by choice or by circumstance.

It is never too late or too early to revise and be wise again for the rest of our journey.......

Use Water-cure.
Rather be thankful for the timely warning, and do something about it.

Drink at least 10% of your own daily water-quota (31.42 ml multiply by your present body weight(kg), every 90 minutes. Use 1/4 teaspoon of sea-salt in your daily diet, for every 1250 ml water drank.

Pain is a sign/signal produced by dehydration in the human body. Pain may be common but it is not normal.

To simplify complications is the FIRST essential of success.

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