Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Injured Patients And Families Push For Cameras In Operating Rooms
The Washington Post: Could Cameras In Operating Rooms Reduce Preventable Medical Deaths?
Chris Nowakoski’s wife died in Wisconsin during what should have been a routine procedure on her pacemaker. Danny Long’s wife in North Carolina suffered catastrophic neurological injury during a surgery to relieve numbness in her extremities. A doctor perforated the colon and esophagus of Deirdre Gilbert’s daughter in Texas, then operated on her after she was dead. In each case, the families still don’t know the full story of what happened to their loved ones because of a lack of documentation and an inability to pursue a costly lawsuit. They are relatives of an estimated 400,000 a year people who die in the United States of preventable medical errors, the third-leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer. But the families say they could have known much more if cameras had been installed in the operating rooms, recording the actions and movements of the doctors and staffers involved. (Jackman, 8/25)
St. Louis Public Radio: The Possibility - And Pitfalls - Of Precision Medicine
Precision medicine, sometimes called personalized medicine, is a model of health care in which care, treatment, and medicines are customized to the individual—tailored, extraordinarily, to a person’s genetic code. Precision medicine is lauded by some medical professionals and hopeful patients for its potential to elevate individual health, but some critics ask if precision medicine is being cast, to the cost and detriment of some groups, as a miracle cure. (O'Conner, 8/25)
