On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 3:13 PM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> wrote:
> Alan J Fletcher <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> Of course, Jed was 13 short of "hundreds of thousands" -- but that's just >> Hospitals. Add in nursing hoems,clinics, doctor's offices .... >> > > Hey, I was just an order of magnitude low. I always say, what's an order > of magnitude among friends? > > In my experience, doctors and hospitals in Europe and Japan are much > cleaner than U.S. ones. However, the British NHS is working on this, as the > article I quoted shows. To someone used to Japanese standards (as I > am), U.S. healthcare is appalling, and our hospitals are a filthy mess. > Ah... but you see, not every infection in a hospital is preventable, even with the most meticulous technique. While a few doctors are slobs and a few hospital are trash pits, most in the US are not. People get infections from their relatives and visitors, and from low levels workers such as janitors and nurse's aids. In addition, many would get infections from virtually any surroundings because they are immuno-compromised by HIV, age and debility, recent surgery and from chemotherapy and radiation. When you come up with a rate for AVOIDABLE infections, let me know. I find a lot of the usual internet citations for medical topics are based on woeful ignorance of the tough realities of practicing medicine in a real world. And for the most part, I'll take US medical care quality including hospitals, as a whole, over any other country's system. As for Japanese health care, it's very checkered. For serious illness, it is nowhere close to the US in the use of high technology and evidence-based decisions about therapy. And it is fraught with every manner of superstition and quackery, practiced alongside of conventional medicine. A lot of people would like to see this happen also in the USA and quite a bit does but for the most part, a concerned person can tell them apart and make a good choice. Not so in Japan, IMHO.
