Preventable Patient Deaths

Floor Speech

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, I want to come to the House floor today to address what I think is a serious issue facing all Americans without regard to race, color, party, region of the country, or anything like that. The issue that I want to talk about is trying to prevent patient deaths.

Back in 1999, the statistics show that about 98,000 people a year died from preventable medical deaths, preventable deaths in hospitals and things like that. That number has grown. We're now at about 200,000 people a year who die in hospitals because of preventable death. That's about 3,800 people every week, which is basically the equivalent of two jumbo jet passenger airplanes crashing and killing all of the passengers.

The fact of the matter is that this is something that we as a Nation need to step forward and do something about. It's something that is in our power to do something about. The thing that we need to do to prevent these preventable deaths is to coordinate. It is possible to eliminate these deaths. It is possible through a series of measures to even eliminate them completely.

What we need to do is first of all look at this problem in a holistic way. There's not one magic thing that is going to stop all of them, but a series of small things that are going to prevent and eradicate these preventable deaths.

The first thing I think we need to do is to come together to figure out how to connect our technology, the people and ideas and figure out how to cooperate and, most importantly, make a commitment to prevent these deaths from happening.

Ten years ago, there was a young woman named Lenore Alexander, who had a healthy 11-year-old girl, Leah. Leah underwent elective surgery to correct pectus carinatum at a prestigious southern California hospital. Though the surgery went well, Lenore awoke at around 2 a.m. on the second postoperative night to find Leah dead, the victim of undetected respiratory arrest caused by a drug that was intended to ease her pain. If Leah had been monitored continuously after the surgery, hospital staff and Lenore may have been alerted, and Leah would probably have been rescued.

There are also other sorts of preventable deaths that have to do with the transfer of infections when hands aren't washed properly. Monitoring was already pointed out by Lenore's tragic situation. The fact is that Lenore's situation is not unique, unfortunately. The Patient Safety, Science & Technology Summit is a gathering of people who came together to figure out what we can do to solve the problem--going back to that coordination and cooperation that I spoke about earlier.

The fact is that at this Patient Safety, Science & Technology Summit trained professionals came together to figure out what we can do about it. They came together to talk about, yes, technology, but also just more safe procedures to protect, eliminate, and save people from preventable deaths.

These preventable deaths are tragedies for the families that suffer them. Imagine going into a hospital for a routine procedure that you don't think is going to be serious only to get the tragic news that your loved one has passed away in the course of it.

So today I want to bring attention, Mr. Speaker, to this situation that is within our power to eliminate and stop. I want to salute the people who attended the Patient Safety, Science & Technology Summit, who came together to try to bring real attention to this problem.

A good friend named Joe Kiani brought this issue to my attention. He's a person who has given a lot of time and attention to try to figure out how we can save families from tragic incidents such as what happened to Lenore's family. And, of course, everyone has something that they can do to prevent these serious problems.

At the end of the day, our goal should be to make zero the number of deaths in hospitals, to make preventable deaths something of the past, and to bring Americans to attention so that we can focus our technology, our procedures, our energy, and our love and attention on trying to make sure that no family suffers these tragic incidents anymore. 200,000 deaths is too many. One is too many. Zero should be our goal. Let's stop preventable hospital deaths.

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