Plug The Leaks In Your Cash Flow

Medical Mistakes - Brains and Babies

Last week the news reported that Dennis Quaid's two newborns were given 1000 times the dose of blood thinners (probably grams instead of milligrams). Given today's technology, shouldn't it be impossible to dispense and administer an adult dose of medication for an infant?

This week, the Associated Press reported that Rhode Island Hospital had been fined $50,000 for the third case of wrong-side brain surgery in a single year. The last number I read for Colorado was 29 wrong site or wrong patient surgeries per year. Surgical mistakes, left ins and infections are an ongoing problem, but wrong site and wrong patient surgeries continue to plague healthcare. Shouldn't it be impossible? Isn't there a way to mistake-proof the process to eliminate them altogether?

In 1999, the report To Err is Human stated that 100,000 people die each year due to medical mistakes, making healthcare the eighth leading cause of death. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (ihi.org) initiated their 100,000 lives campaign a few years ago by instituting procedures and protocols to prevent many mistakes. Based on their analysis two years later, the effort had saved over 100,000 lives.

With the weekly reports of glaring medical errors like baby overdoses and wrong side brain surgery there is still a lot of room for improvement.

Jay Arthur, the KnowWareâ Man, works with companies that want to fire up their profits using Lean Six Sigma. He is the author of Lean Six Sigma DeMYSTiFieD (McGraw Hill 2007) and the QI Macros SPC Software for Excel. Instead of training Black Belts and Green Belts, Jay wants you to develop Money Belts--people who can find and plug the leaks in your cash flow.

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posted by Jay Arthur @ 7:12 AM