"Patients in for-profit and minor teaching or non-teaching government-owned hospitals were more likely to suffer several types of preventable adverse events," according to researcher Dr. Eric J. Thomas, of the University of Texas-Houston Medical School.
Patients treated in minor or non-teaching government hospitals had complication rates 4 to 5 times higher than patients treated in non-profit hospitals.
Patients treated at for-profit hospitals were more than twice as likely to experience surgical complications and four times as likely to have problems from missed or delayed diagnosis or treatment than patients in non-profit hospitals.
An editorial on the subject in the same issue says that "something is wrong in our nation's hospitals." Dr. Gordon Schiff of Cook County Hospital in Chicago goes on to say "While hospitals are fatally injuring more people than are killed by automobiles and firearms, at a cost that is as large as caring for people with HIV/AIDS, hospital managers and even medical staffs appear more preoccupied with survival in the marketplace than the survival of their patients."
Schiff goes on to say that "public awareness and demands for change are growing."
In Touch Vol. 4, No. 6 June 2000 ISSN 1525-416X
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