Not All Errors Due to Insurers

Although it’s really tempting for me to blame certain health insurers (*cough* Aetna *cough*) for what ails the American health care system, insurance isn’t the only source of idiocy.

Consider, for example, this article in Insurance Journal:

The test involved the infusion of the amino acid arginine into his veins. His physician prescribed a dose of 5.75 grams, but the prescription processed by the Shands Medical Plaza’s outpatient pharmacy was 60 grams.

Hospital workers administered the dose, and did not realize the error even when the parents asked them to check their son, who developed a headache and appeared to be in extreme pain.

The parents took him home, but when he vomited and had seizures they brought him to the Shands AGH emergency room, where they waited four hours for the boy to be seen.

He was later sent to a pediatric intensive care unit, and a CT scan was misread because there was no pediatric radiologist on duty, the Ferreros said.

By the time he was transfered to the intensive care unit at Shands at the University of Florida, the boy was brain dead.

Let’s see…no one caught that the dose given was roughly 10 times what was prescribed, a sick kid is sent home from the hospital…and he waits four hours in the ER waiting room when brought back.

(I suppose that there is some small mercy in the four hour wait. My wife and I are used to 12-13 hour waits at our local ER when she’s in need of help.)

Tags: