Wow, my second health care post in less than a year
Loyal readers of danieldrezner.com are aware that while I’m aware that health care is important, I find it difficult to maintain focus when the issue comes up. I am dimly aware, however, that Canada’s single-payer system is frequently cited by liberals as their preferred form of health care reform. Which is why I found the ...
Loyal readers of danieldrezner.com are aware that while I'm aware that health care is important, I find it difficult to maintain focus when the issue comes up. I am dimly aware, however, that Canada's single-payer system is frequently cited by liberals as their preferred form of health care reform. Which is why I found the following Brad Evenson story in Cananda's National Post so interesting:
Loyal readers of danieldrezner.com are aware that while I’m aware that health care is important, I find it difficult to maintain focus when the issue comes up. I am dimly aware, however, that Canada’s single-payer system is frequently cited by liberals as their preferred form of health care reform. Which is why I found the following Brad Evenson story in Cananda’s National Post so interesting:
As many as 24,000 patients die in Canadian hospitals each year, while tens of thousands more are crippled, injured or poisoned in association with medical errors that could have been prevented. A new landmark study of 20 hospitals in five provinces found one in 13 patients suffers an adverse event, more than double the rate found in studies of U.S. hospitals. “I think this is pretty explosive data,” said Alan Forster, a health services researcher at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. “When you start looking at these numbers, you really see the problem in a graphic way.” The study, to be published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, found 185,000 patients a year suffer adverse events…. In 1999, the U.S. Institute of Medicine published its report on medical errors, “To Err is Human,” an effort to bolster patient safety. It cited studies in Colorado and New York that found adverse events ranged from 2.9.% to 3.7% of hospital admissions. By contrast, the new study found 7.5% of the 2.5 million patients admitted to Canadian hospitals each year suffer adverse events. Dr. Baker says the American studies were focused mainly on major events that could attract lawsuits, not minor problems. When compared to similar studies in the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia, Canada fared well, especially when preventable errors were considered. For example, a study of 28 Australian hospitals in 1992 found 51% of adverse events could have been avoided. A study of two teaching hospitals in the U.K. found 48% were preventable. The Canadian figure of 36.9% was virtually identical to a New Zealand study in 1998.
This may be an example of correlation and not causation. Still, a common assumption among the cognoscenti is that Canada’s health care system is superior to America’s — and this study points out that this is not necessarily so.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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