http://www.google.com/notebook/feeds/14489634190446867828/notebooks/BDQs4SwoQ28vqit0h/NDR4KSwoQwLHli90h2006-09-21T17:43:13.344Z2006-09-21T17:59:14.657Z<div><font face="georgia" color="#cc0000" size="4"><strong>The Startling Numbers Behind Medical Malpractice</strong></font></div> <div><font face="georgia" size="2"></font> </div> <div><font face="georgia" size="2"> - Fewer than 20 percent of U.S. doctors use electronic medical records, among the lowest rates in industrialized countries;</font></div> <div><font face="georgia" size="2"></font> </div> <div><font face="georgia" size="2"> - One-third of U.S. patients reported a medical, medication or laboratory error in the past two years;</font></div> <div><font face="georgia" size="2"></font> </div> <div><font face="georgia" size="2"> - About 115 per 100,000 deaths in the U.S. are preventable with proper health care, compared with 75 in France and 81 in Japan (<cite>Bloomberg/Miami Herald, </cite>9/21);</font></div> <div><font face="georgia" size="2"></font> </div> <div><font face="georgia" size="2"> - A recent study reports that 100,000 - 150,000 deaths are preventable each year;</font></div> <div><font face="georgia" size="2"></font> </div> <div><font face="georgia" size="2"> - Visits to doctors for adverse drug events have increased in the past five years;</font></div> <div><font face="georgia" size="2"></font> </div> <div><font face="georgia" size="2"> - Based on 2000–2002 mortality rates for Medicare beneficiaries, there is a thirty-three-percentage-point spread between the risk-adjusted mortality ratios achieved in the best 10 percent of hospitals (lowest rate) and the bottom 10 percent.</font></div>CW team