ProPublica is working on a series about hospital mistakes. But the Rory Staunton experience has prompted a fairly lengthy article about the problem. Staunton is the kid who died from septic shock after being sent home by NYU's Langone Medical Center. The Center has announced changes they are making to prevent such a problem in the future. The authors of the article, who claim to have extensive reporting experience in the area, don't think that the changes will be fully implemented.
As part of their evidence they cite the fact that a national panel concluded more than a decade ago that nearly 100,000 people die each year as a result of errors in hospitals. They also relate repeated mistakes that have occurred in three hospitals in the recent past. Rhode Island Hospital, affiliated with Brown University, has been fined three times for operating on the wrong side of a patient's head. Nurses at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, a now closed public hospital near Los Angeles, couldn't get its nurses to properly monitor heart patients. In a clinic in Las Vegas nurses reused syringes.
The writers believe it's the hospital culture that is primarily responsible for these errors.
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