A study recently released by The Institute of Medicine is estimating that approximately 100,000 Americans die every year due to medical mistakes that could have been prevented.
If the Centers for Disease Control included preventable medical mistakes as a category, it would be the sixth leading cause of death in America.
Among these mistakes includes post-operative surgical infections, which some experts claim can be prevented by taking antibiotics prior to surgery in order to prevent infections from occurring in the first place, especially if undergoing an elective surgery.
There are five easy steps that can and should be put into place in order to save the lives that would be lost by preventable medical errors.
These steps, including the above-mentioned antibiotics, include a mandatory computerized systems for medical record and patient management; computerized physician ordering (which would eliminate medical errors from illegible handwriting;) radio frequency tags in surgical tools to prevent instruments left inside patients; and mandatory hand-washing programs.
According to a local news report, the Florida state legislature should enforce these steps to help prevent medical mistakes rather than focusing on passing laws to limit monetary gain by victims.
