[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 51 (Tuesday, April 16, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H2029-H2030]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       PREVENTABLE PATIENT DEATHS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Minnesota (Mr. Ellison) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, I want to come to the House floor today to 
address what I think is a serious issue facing all Americans without 
regard to race, color, party, region of the country, or anything like 
that. The issue that I want to talk about is trying to prevent patient 
deaths.
  Back in 1999, the statistics show that about 98,000 people a year 
died from preventable medical deaths, preventable deaths in hospitals 
and things like

[[Page H2030]]

that. That number has grown. We're now at about 200,000 people a year 
who die in hospitals because of preventable death. That's about 3,800 
people every week, which is basically the equivalent of two jumbo jet 
passenger airplanes crashing and killing all of the passengers.
  The fact of the matter is that this is something that we as a Nation 
need to step forward and do something about. It's something that is in 
our power to do something about. The thing that we need to do to 
prevent these preventable deaths is to coordinate. It is possible to 
eliminate these deaths. It is possible through a series of measures to 
even eliminate them completely.
  What we need to do is first of all look at this problem in a holistic 
way. There's not one magic thing that is going to stop all of them, but 
a series of small things that are going to prevent and eradicate these 
preventable deaths.
  The first thing I think we need to do is to come together to figure 
out how to connect our technology, the people and ideas and figure out 
how to cooperate and, most importantly, make a commitment to prevent 
these deaths from happening.
  Ten years ago, there was a young woman named Lenore Alexander, who 
had a healthy 11-year-old girl, Leah. Leah underwent elective surgery 
to correct pectus carinatum at a prestigious southern California 
hospital. Though the surgery went well, Lenore awoke at around 2 a.m. 
on the second postoperative night to find Leah dead, the victim of 
undetected respiratory arrest caused by a drug that was intended to 
ease her pain. If Leah had been monitored continuously after the 
surgery, hospital staff and Lenore may have been alerted, and Leah 
would probably have been rescued.
  There are also other sorts of preventable deaths that have to do with 
the transfer of infections when hands aren't washed properly. 
Monitoring was already pointed out by Lenore's tragic situation. The 
fact is that Lenore's situation is not unique, unfortunately. The 
Patient Safety, Science & Technology Summit is a gathering of people 
who came together to figure out what we can do to solve the problem--
going back to that coordination and cooperation that I spoke about 
earlier.
  The fact is that at this Patient Safety, Science & Technology Summit 
trained professionals came together to figure out what we can do about 
it. They came together to talk about, yes, technology, but also just 
more safe procedures to protect, eliminate, and save people from 
preventable deaths.
  These preventable deaths are tragedies for the families that suffer 
them. Imagine going into a hospital for a routine procedure that you 
don't think is going to be serious only to get the tragic news that 
your loved one has passed away in the course of it.
  So today I want to bring attention, Mr. Speaker, to this situation 
that is within our power to eliminate and stop. I want to salute the 
people who attended the Patient Safety, Science & Technology Summit, 
who came together to try to bring real attention to this problem.
  A good friend named Joe Kiani brought this issue to my attention. 
He's a person who has given a lot of time and attention to try to 
figure out how we can save families from tragic incidents such as what 
happened to Lenore's family. And, of course, everyone has something 
that they can do to prevent these serious problems.

                              {time}  1010

  At the end of the day, our goal should be to make zero the number of 
deaths in hospitals, to make preventable deaths something of the past, 
and to bring Americans to attention so that we can focus our 
technology, our procedures, our energy, and our love and attention on 
trying to make sure that no family suffers these tragic incidents 
anymore. 200,000 deaths is too many. One is too many. Zero should be 
our goal. Let's stop preventable hospital deaths.

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