| Hospital Death, the Billing Computer's Life Support, Living Souls |
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| teresaflisiuk.info |
| "What the mortality rate does is give you an entree to talk to your doctor and say, 'Look, is this hospital stay going to kill me?' " That's not an easy question to answer with any certainty. By trying, officials knew they were courting trouble with the hospital industry, Iezzoni says. An earlier effort by Medicare to report on hospital death rates faltered in the early '90s. The agency wilted under relentless criticism that its so-called death list didn't give adequate weight to a hospital's mix of patients, including how sick, poor and old they were. |
