Zinajda Karahodzic
English 102 6WB
2 March 2011
Editorial
Missouri hospitals owe it to the Public to admit their mistakes
By the Editorial Board, February 28, 2011

The editorial page has been supporting the idea that Missouri should join the 25 states that require tracking down serious medical error reports. An example of a medical error would be a pair of scissors “forgotten” to be taken out after an open body operation. This is a topic that the public would be interested in so editorial writers act in what they believe would get the attention from the public. They estimated about 98,000 deaths that happened due to preventable errors during medical procedures. This statistic fact would be placed as the sixth leading causes of deaths. Although, hospitals do keep track of these records but they are not released to the public. Any patient(s) should have the right to view this type of record from a hospital. Editorial writers suspect that hospital organizations are afraid of losing money and possible lawsuits. Unfortunately, this type of medical report is not something you would see on daily news so it would be called “never events” or “near misses”, since errors aren’t expected to happen to a professional. Even though, everyone makes mistakes so the statues of American health care remains unbalanced. In a 2008 study, it proved that patients who went through a medical error were hospitalized four times longer than an average patient after surgery recovery. So the editorial writers believe that Missouri lawmakers should pass laws that encourage hospitals to report doctors and medical errors that occur, which leads to rewards to hospitals that make a well report. I never thought that professional doctors make mistakes often, but I would have never guessed that hospitals would refuse to release this type of information that would concern patients. I