Canadian Hospitals Twice as Risky as US Hospitals

Still, hospitals are risky everywhere. This is from a CBC interview with Professor Liam Donaldson, England’s former chief medical officer and author of a new World Health Organization report:

Still, hospitals are risky everywhere. This is from a CBC interview with Professor Liam Donaldson, England’s former chief medical officer and author of a new World Health Organization report:

“If you were admitted to hospital tomorrow in any country … your chances of being subjected to an error in your care would be something like 1 in 10. Your chances of dying due to an error in health care would be 1 in 300,” Donaldson told a news briefing, Reuters reported.

This compared with a risk of dying in an air crash of about 1 in 10 million passengers, he said.

Of every 100 hospitalized patients at any given time, seven in developed and 10 in developing countries will acquire at least one health care-associated infection, according to the report.

Studies estimate that in Canada, the prevalence of such infections was estimated at 11.6 per cent in 2002, compared with 4.5 per cent in the U.S.