Eric Nalder and Cathleen Crowley discuss in the Hearst Newspaper that even today, there are very few hospitals that are willing to release medical reports publicly. An example was a case that included a man who nearly died when he was injected with the wrong substance to cure his snoring. Although he was reprimanded after he complained with some help, the story has never been released until organizations such as Hearst revealed it to the public.
The health care industry has resisted public reporting of medical errors. It has spent more money lobbying Congress than any other industry — about $500 million a year — but it is unclear how much of that money was related to error reporting.
Although there have been cases when hospitals actually reflect and fix errors that are reported to them in order to increase their safety rank, many hospitals have fear that their reputation will drop. This pride that's keeping them from publicly releasing yearly medical reports is definitely not what people want. As consumers and customers of products from hospitals, we have the right to analyze by ourselves without the help of some crafty high-order organization.
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