High security rating at hospital that treated Trump should be minimal for all

With his face bloodied, presidential candidate Donald Trump is seen in July being taken from a… [+] campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania, at a nearby hospital. (Photo by Rebecca DROKE / AFP) (Photo by REBECCA DROKE/AFP via Getty Images)

AFP via Getty Images

Updated, November 23, 2024: This story has been updated with information about President-elect Donald Trump's Health and Human Services nominees and the exact date of Trump's assassination attempt this summer.

When the Leapfrog Group released its latest patient safety findings, I looked up the hospital Donald Trump was rushed to after an assassination attempt in western Pennsylvania last summer .

The current president-elect was lucky in more ways than one: a high-powered rifle bullet narrowly missed his head. Butler Memorial Hospital, from which Trump was released safely late on the night of July 13, has a long history of above-average patient safety performance. Luck, however, should have nothing to do with avoiding harm from treatment.

Ensuring consistently safe care in every hospital across the country should be a conscious policy choice of the Trump administration. The candidates proposed for key positions in the Department of Health and Human Services demonstrate cautious optimism.

Patient safety became a political priority almost exactly 25 years ago. During the slow news period after Thanksgiving 1999, the Institute of Medicine released a report stating that 44,000 to 98,000 Americans were killed each year because of preventable medical errors in hospitals. These errors also added financial costs of $17 billion to $29 billion. Subsequent research pushed the death toll higher, with Leapfrog estimating 160,000 preventable deaths in hospitals in 2018, more than three times the number of people who died in road accidents.

Butler Memorial has consistently earned an A on Leapfrog's semiannual report card, although it received a B in its spring 2024 and fall 2024 reports. Yet even though the hospital has failed in some areas, it has fully achieved the Leapfrog standard for effective leadership to prevent mistakes. This category includes providing resources to implement a patient safety program and developing systems and structures to support actions to improve patient safety.

The hospital to which Donald Trump was rushed after an assassination attempt has long experienced high… [+] patient safety score.

Leapfrog Group's harm prevention funding collapses badly

It is in this systemic focus on harm prevention that health policy comes in. The initial report from the Institute of Medicine (today known as the National Academy of Medicine) sparked public outcry . In response, Congress provided $50 million to what is now the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Since then, however, patient safety funding has failed to even match inflation, let alone reflect the pervasiveness of preventable harms that researchers have repeatedly documented. For example, a 2015 National Academy of Medicine report says it's likely that most people will encounter at least one misdiagnosis during their lifetime, sometimes with devastating consequences.

In FY 2024, the AHRQ Office of Patient Safety budget was $89.6 million, with the same amount requested by the President for FY 2025. To put that in perspective , this modest funding is not even equal to half of the average hospital's net patient revenue. AHRQ's total budget request for FY 2025 was $513 million for all of its activities, which include providing data and analysis to policymakers and research in digital health, primary care and in behavioral health. Again, in perspective, that's the sales of a few Costco warehouses as the total amount allocated to research to improve the safety and efficiency of a nearly $5 trillion healthcare system.

A policy problem AHRQ faces regarding funding is that the ineffective or harmful care it helps prevent is invisible to the patients and families who benefit from it. The Leapfrog Group estimates that 50,000 lives could be saved each year if all U.S. hospitals earned an A score on patient safety, but it will take some digging to understand just how much public perception of safe care is changing. deviates from reality. When you look at the list of 12 hospitals that have received an A from Leapfrog every year since the first grades were assigned in 2012, the most famous names in American medicine are conspicuously absent. For example, there is the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, but not the famous Minnesota home clinic; a Kaiser Permanente outpost in Orange County, but none in its headquarters area in Oakland or Los Angeles; and there are no Harvard hospitals on the Massachusetts list.

Although the attempted assassination of Trump was dramatic, the more subtle lesson in health policy is that none of us, president, presidential candidate, or billionaire, can guarantee that we will be okay if we suddenly need medical attention. It is therefore essential that certain standards are respected everywhere. Yet since 2012, as I have written, House Republicans have been trying to eliminate AHRQ altogether, largely, it seems, because the agency represented an easy target for budget cutters . Unfortunately, this is a classic example of foolish spending.

In his book Savings Lives & Saving Money: Transforming Health and Healthcare, former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a former member of the AHRQ National Advisory Council, of which I am currently a member, emphasized the importance for individuals to have access to quality information based on results. . As an individual, I couldn't agree more. But policymakers also need this same type of information.

In late 2023, the Department of Health and Human Services launched a National Action Alliance for Patient and Workforce Safety, coordinated by AHRQ. HHS officials designated by the Trump administration are uniquely equipped to expand and accelerate this effort. Dr. Martin Makary, who will be named head of the Food and Drug Administration, is a respected expert on patient safety. He wrote that medical error is the third leading cause of death and called for greater transparency about hospital performance. Dr. Mehmet Oz, charged with leading the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, surely experienced his share of patient safety problems as a former heart surgeon at a large academic medical center. Meanwhile, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nominated for HHS secretary, suffered a highly publicized misdiagnosis, almost undergoing unnecessary surgery for a putative brain tumor until a second doctor reviewed the images and determined that his symptoms were caused by a parasite that had infiltrated. in his brain and then he died.

Donald Trump's zero-harm experiment; the professional expertise of Makary and Oz; and the medical error suffered by Kennedy should motivate the new administration to devote funds and political influence to demanding that hospitals with the systems and structures necessary to support action to improve patient safety, as this was the case at Butler Memorial, are the minimum that every American should have. can be expected.

What Are The Main Benefits Of Comparing Car Insurance Quotes Online

LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / June 24, 2020, / Compare-autoinsurance.Org has launched a new blog post that presents the main benefits of comparing multiple car insurance quotes. For more info and free online quotes, please visit https://compare-autoinsurance.Org/the-advantages-of-comparing-prices-with-car-insurance-quotes-online/ The modern society has numerous technological advantages. One important advantage is the speed at which information is sent and received. With the help of the internet, the shopping habits of many persons have drastically changed. The car insurance industry hasn't remained untouched by these changes. On the internet, drivers can compare insurance prices and find out which sellers have the best offers. View photos The advantages of comparing online car insurance quotes are the following: Online quotes can be obtained from anywhere and at any time. Unlike physical insurance agencies, websites don't have a specific schedule and they are available at any time. Drivers that have busy working schedules, can compare quotes from anywhere and at any time, even at midnight. Multiple choices. Almost all insurance providers, no matter if they are well-known brands or just local insurers, have an online presence. Online quotes will allow policyholders the chance to discover multiple insurance companies and check their prices. Drivers are no longer required to get quotes from just a few known insurance companies. Also, local and regional insurers can provide lower insurance rates for the same services. Accurate insurance estimates. Online quotes can only be accurate if the customers provide accurate and real info about their car models and driving history. Lying about past driving incidents can make the price estimates to be lower, but when dealing with an insurance company lying to them is useless. Usually, insurance companies will do research about a potential customer before granting him coverage. Online quotes can be sorted easily. Although drivers are recommended to not choose a policy just based on its price, drivers can easily sort quotes by insurance price. Using brokerage websites will allow drivers to get quotes from multiple insurers, thus making the comparison faster and easier. For additional info, money-saving tips, and free car insurance quotes, visit https://compare-autoinsurance.Org/ Compare-autoinsurance.Org is an online provider of life, home, health, and auto insurance quotes. This website is unique because it does not simply stick to one kind of insurance provider, but brings the clients the best deals from many different online insurance carriers. In this way, clients have access to offers from multiple carriers all in one place: this website. On this site, customers have access to quotes for insurance plans from various agencies, such as local or nationwide agencies, brand names insurance companies, etc. "Online quotes can easily help drivers obtain better car insurance deals. All they have to do is to complete an online form with accurate and real info, then compare prices", said Russell Rabichev, Marketing Director of Internet Marketing Company. CONTACT: Company Name: Internet Marketing CompanyPerson for contact Name: Gurgu CPhone Number: (818) 359-3898Email: cgurgu@internetmarketingcompany.BizWebsite: https://compare-autoinsurance.Org/ SOURCE: Compare-autoinsurance.Org View source version on accesswire.Com:https://www.Accesswire.Com/595055/What-Are-The-Main-Benefits-Of-Comparing-Car-Insurance-Quotes-Online View photos