Displaced Public Outcry - February 17th 2011

Dear Friends of Roscoe Chiropractic,

Don't you love the Midwest? A blizzard and deep freeze one week and 50 degrees the next.  Keeps us on our toes. Though I do have to say I prefer the 50 degrees and I'm not 100% sure but I don't think I'm alone in that preference. Ok so big news here, dun dada daaaaaaaah, Roscoe Chiropractic presents to you their brand new website www.roscoechiro.com! Everything is up and running, so I encourage all of you to just take a quick click tour through it and send me a little note back here with any feedback you have on it. We want this to be the best website possible for our wonderful patients.

We are still running our February special for Heart Health Month, so tell your friends and family not to wait until the last minute because February will be gone before we know it! $10 worth of Oatmeal and those exams and x-rays are free. Can't beat a deal like that! (discounts not applicable for Medicare, a/a or w/c -- I have to say it.)

OK so today I wanted to share with you some interesting albeit slightly disturbing statistics about the medical profession, MD's in particular. The purpose of this is not to scare anyone but to draw to light the lack of action on the public's part in relation to these numbers. This statistical information is pulled originally from the Nov 2010 USA Today. It deals with patients who die on an average day from medical "adverse events".  First let us outline what is included in a medical "adverse event", things like: letting infections develop, giving the wrong medication to a patient or administering too much of the correct medicine.

This study was completed by the Health and Human Services Department and it states that 180,000 patients die every year from these "events" stated above. Break that down and it equals 493 deaths a day, 20 an hour or a fatality every 3 minutes.

To put the numbers in perspective they also state death tolls from the Iraqi war at 713 deaths a year or about 2 a day;  death tolls from auto accidents at 33,808 a year or 92 deaths a day due to car accident fatality; fatalities from firearms at 34,428 a year or about 93 a day. 

The purpose of looking at these numbers is now to consider the highly public protection measures that have been taken and are currently in place for the last three: Anti-war and outrage over military deaths, gun-control and huge debate over the legality of gun ownership, and of course MADD, SADD and DADD (All the anti-drunk driving campaigns). These are all completely valid organizations, protection measures and campaigns for awareness!  It just seems that one has slipped through the cracks here...and it must be a crack the size of the San Andreas Fault because how else could 500 deaths a day go unnoticed by the activists who live to bring this stuff to public's attention? I mean this was written about in USA Today and yet we still don't see the same level of outrage as we would if say, a jumbo jet crashed every day killing all 500 people aboard. Airlines would get shut down if that happened and yet hospitals and other medical facilities seem to just float right by without mention. 

 I understand that mistakes happen and we're all human, but there has to be some level of accountability on this, some measure taken to address this massive number of deaths every day. It's almost as if, we see these statistics and we are numbed to the fact that this is human life being taken prematurely and in error. We are outraged by the death of a little girl from a stray bullet but we almost sit back in acceptance if she is accidentally killed with an incorrect dosage of medication while in the hospital. Motive is one thing and of course MD's and nurses are there to help us, but they still must be held accountable as a whole for such an outrageous amount of accidental deaths while in their care.

Let's end on a high note here in stating the fact that chiropractic doesn't even have statistics that list deaths per year, because there have been no instances that someone has died as a direct result of an adjustment. Interestingly though, there have been quite a lot of public anti-chiropractic campaigns. I know, hard to believe there would be an anti-chiropractic campaign! It seems the public's outcry is a little displaced at times so I just wanted to bring some of this to our attention to put things in perspective.

If you want to weigh in with your opinion on this please do! Doctor Chris was particularly interested in this topic so feel free to start a dialog! Have a great week everyone!