Our immediately preceding blog post discussed the high incidence of medical error in hospitals across the country. The American Medical Association states that medical malpractice accounts directly for the deaths of a quarter of a million patients annually, as well as a much larger number of serious injuries sustained by patients who ultimately survive the negligence.

The following outcome of a healthy elderly woman's recent stay at a hospital in Massachusetts serves as a timely reminder that, for many people, a hospital stay is more dangerous than it is protective. The woman's family has brought a wrongful death lawsuit against the hospital and several of its doctors and nurses.

In a nutshell, Geraldine Oswald, 76, was quite healthy when she was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital last November for a minor urinary tract infection.

She never made it out of the hospital alive. In administering her with a blood-thinning drug to prevent what doctors thought might become excessive clotting, a nurse mistakenly erred on the dose commonly prescribed, subjecting Oswald to an amount 30 times too high. The dosage rendered it impossible for Oswald's blood to clot at all when she began bleeding internally. She died as a result.

The hospital has openly acknowledged its error and apologized to the family. Its internal report noted that, "This excessive medication dose was preventable and a result of a failure of systems within the hospital's control."

Many studies assert that prescription dose errors result in more hospital deaths owing to medication mistakes than any other cause.

Related Resource: The Boston Globe "MGH faces suit over drug error that killed woman" March 10, 2011