Article in the NYT on military medical errors

[MillCreek]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/us/in-military-care-a-pattern-of-errors-but-not-scrutiny.html

Speaking as someone who has been doing this for a living for over 30 years, I am almost speechless on how the military is falling down on patient safety.  I do several root cause analyses and even more risk management investigations per year and I am quite familiar with how valuable they can be.  Yet the DOD hospitals are just not doing them to the number required.

I wonder what is going on in the military system that is keeping the risk managers and patient safety experts from doing their job. 

[Boomhauer]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/us/in-military-care-a-pattern-of-errors-but-not-scrutiny.html

Speaking as someone who has been doing this for a living for over 30 years, I am almost speechless on how the military is falling down on patient safety.  I do several root cause analyses and even more risk management investigations per year and I am quite familiar with how valuable they can be.  Yet the DOD hospitals are just not doing them to the number required.

I wonder what is going on in the military system that is keeping the risk managers and patient safety experts from doing their job. 

Once somebody signs on the dotted line and becomes government property, the .gov doesn't always hold that person's wellbeing in regard. DOD run hospitals have long been criticised for poor performance, they are just like any other .gov agency, i.e., mediocre is usually the best one can hope for.

[roo_ster]

What Boomhauer wrote.

Also, their patients tend to be younger and healthier than average, so they can get away with more without killing great swaths of less hale elderly, & such.

Oh, and they own your ass.  And can use your chain of command and the UCMJ to keep your butt in the hospital if they want to.

[RoadKingLarry]

One of the many reasons I left the Navy after 12 years was the medical care. On subs we had 1 independent duty corpsman, the last one I dealt with was HMC/SS (E7). he seemed far more interested in being a diver than a corpsman. Saw that guy put one shipmate in a coma for 2 weeks, didn't think he deserved getting taken off on the perstrans and sent to a hospital when we were already doing the small boat transfer in Bermuda.  8 days later when we got back to Norfolk the sick guy had to be hoisted out the hatch.
2nd guy I really thought he was gonna kill. Kid had something wrong with him and he was slowly wasting away, looked like a death camp survivor the last time I saw him. The command had decided he was faking being sick. Ships Doc convinced the squadron Doctor he was OK  to go to sea. The kid was working mess service and passed out and measured his length on the deck less than 8 hours after leaving port. Corpsman decided he actually had pneumonia stuck an IV  in him and made him stay in his bunk for the 5 days we were at sea. I got out right after that but I'd heard his parents came to see him and his mom pretty well *expletive deleted*it-a-brick over it, drove up to DC and got the Congress critter involved. Turned out the kid had some kind of degenerative digestive tract disease.