On the positive side, recent developments like accrediting agency JCAHO’s implementation this past July of the Universal Protocol for Preventing Wrong Site, Wrong Procedure, Wrong Person Surgery, increased use of bar coding for medication information and other developments have already moved us toward reducing medical error. But a lot of work still needs to be done nationally and in Illinois.
With advances in reducing medical errors, insurance premiums for doctors should go down - and if they don’t, Illinois should step in and cap insurance rates for doctors, particularly those with records that show their safe medical practices. Health care is a right, and decent societies provide it. No one should be allowed to threaten the health of Illinois, or the nation. Instead of trying to put a price on the pain and suffering of a patient wrongly put in a persistently vegetative state, or one who has wrongly lost limbs in surgery, which is what the 2004 “Code Blue” Medical Liability Crisis Relief Plan legislation does, we should work to prevent medical error - and to provide the proper healthcare that these injured patients, and all of us, need.
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