A Heparin Tale: Dennis Quaid On 60 Minutes
The actor and his wife, you may recall, sued the Heparin maker late last year after their newborn twins were inadvertently given massive doses of the blood thinner at a Los Angeles hospital. The lawsuit seeks more than $50,000 in damages and claims Baxter Healthcare was negligent in packaging different doses of the product in similar vials with blue backgrounds, and also claims Baxter should have recalled large-dose vials after overdoses killed three children at an Indianapolis hospital last year. Baxter, of course, is also at the center of a scandal over contaminated Heparin.
And so tonight at 7 pm EST, Quaid talks to 60 Minutes about an episode he describes as life-and-death in hopes of drawing attention to the problem of medical errors. “After these three kids died in Indiana, they did not issue a recall…They recall toasters…trucks. They recall dog food that came from China last year. But they don’t recall medicine that kills people if you give it in the wrong dosage…we think it’s wrong.”
Debra Bello, a senior director at Baxter, explains why the company didn’t recall the old vials still in hospital storage rooms, from which the Quaid twins received their overdoses. “Because the product was safe and effective, and the errors, as the hospital has acknowledged, were preventable and due to failures in their system,” Bello tells 60 Minutes, while pointing out that ultimately, the person administering the drug should have read its label.
www.worldpharmanews.net
Pharmalot » A Heparin Tale: Dennis Quaid On 60 Minutes…
The actor and his wife, you may recall, sued the Heparin maker late last year after their newborn twins were inadvertently given massive doses of the blood thinner at a Los Angeles hospital. The lawsuit seeks more than $50,000 in damages and claims Bax…
Dr. Lynda
This is only the tip of the iceberg regarding medical errors. Unfortunately, medical errors kill more people than car wrecks, heart disease and AIDS combined every single year!!!
The sad thing is that many health problems are very simply treated with proper nutrition and dietary supplementation. Of course, these treatments are discouraged by the medical profession because they are inexpensive and effective, thus, taking money from their pockets.
Of course, the problem with Dennis Quaid’s kids was a terrible error and could not have been solved so easily, however, it does point out the disregard the medical profession and the drug companies have for the safety of patients.
In the year 2007 a report before a Congressional committee regarding safety of health supplements, it was reported that there was not a single death attributed to a nutritional supplement in the year 2005; do you ever think that will happen with drugs??? And did you also know that as many nutritional supplements are used as drugs each year? I think a comparison should be made between the deaths attributable to drugs and those attributable to dietary supplements each year.
There should also be a study done with regard to medical errors vs. errors made by natural/alternative health providers which cause lasting damage or death. You would probably see a huge difference there as well.
When people wake up to the fact that the American medical system has $$$$ as their bottom line and not the health of the people they serve, maybe they will begin to realize that there ARE alternatives, viable and effective alternatives, to drugs and surgery.
Justice in Michigan
The issue of supplements is beside the point. This is about medical errors.
But there have, indeed, been deaths associated with ephedra and numerous other supplements, whether because of interactions, the substance itself, contamination, etc.
A number of the supplement manufacturers are owned by pharm companies, so we’re talking about the same folks.
Proper nutrition - not to mention exercise, sleep, meditation - can be achieved by the right die. And scams beget scams, like bashing pharma to sell “life extension.”
We’ve got enough polypharmacy already.
Chris
Once again sweeping and unqualified comments like “the disregard the medical profession and the drug companies have for safety of patients” appear. On what basis? No doubt there is value in nutrition and sensible lifestyles, but to cite a report in which no deaths were attributed to health supplements compared with drugs without mentionnig under what conditions they were used is a stretch to say the very least.
Chris
The Quaids have a very sad story. The root of it though seems not to be Baxter’s fault but the failure of the hospital staff where his infants were treated to observe and act on the label of the medicine. For decades drugs have had corporate packaging and clear, formulaic and standardized package inserts. It is clear how they should be used. Baxter is no more cuplable than any other company, depsite the Quaids’ sad event. There efforts to start a foundation might benefit moves to improve clarity on drug labels. Hopefully this will be more productive than retribution.
Julia Schopick
What a horror story this is! I think that one of the most frightening aspects of the Quaids’ nightmare is the fact that the Cedars-Sinai hospital staff outright lied to them when, sensing something was wrong, the Quaids called at night and asked the nurses how their babies were doing. (The nurses lied, and told them that their babies were doing just fine. Of course, they weren’t.)
This kind of covering up of the truth should lead the public to realize that lots of life-threatening hospital errors actually go unreported. I have no doubt that the staff was hoping that they would be able to get the situation under control by the time the Quaids arrived in the morning. Then, of course, the Quaids would never know what had happened, and the hospital would not have to admit that anything had gone wrong.
Before he died two years ago at the age of 56, my husband Tim was a 15-year brain tumor survivor, who spent a great deal of time in hospitals; all were well-known, “first rate” medical centers. I cannot tell you the number of times I caught life-threatening errors-in-progress and brought them to the staff’s attention. Only once or twice was anyone grateful to me. Mostly, they were angry that I noticed, and considered my input an intrusion.
One final note: On “60 Minutes,” Dennis Quaid called it a “conspiracy of silence,” and said that doctors protect nurses. I actually found, during my husband’s many hospitalizations, that more often, doctors — not really KNOWING the patient — would give wrong “orders,” but that nurses, afraid of losing their jobs, would follow those orders – knowing they were wrong.
Thank God the Quaids are determined to do something about this problem which is, as they correctly perceive, an epidemic. I wish them lots of luck with their Foundation!
Julia Schopick
http://www.HonestMedicine.com
Gene
This incident is but the tip of the iceberg. The medical industry has largely done a perfectly terrible job of addressing patient safety from a systems perspective. The drug company in this case is working hard to blame the people at the ’sharp end of the spear’ when in fact from a system safety standpoint they are all deeply involved. Interested readers should review books and articles by James Reason, PhD., including “Diagnosing Vulnerable Systems Syndrome,” British Medical Journal, and “Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents”, Ashgate, 1997. Baxter and the hospital are both ‘running for cover’ by trying to put all the blame on the nurse, when in fact all of them are responsible for failing to address systems problems that make these errors more likely. Hopefully Mr. Quaid’s foundation will help make some progress in this area, by getting away from the ‘name, blame, shame and train’ response to human error and implement a more modern, and effective, systems approach to patient safety.
HorusCat
I don’t think there is any way to measure how many people have died BECAUSE they relied on supplements, when what they needed was medical care…
I also take umbrage at the idea that the medical profession has no regard for the patients it serves. This is not HorusCat the rep speaking, it is HorusCat the daughter and sister of doctors and friend of many doctors, RN, NPs, LPNs, etc. None of them take the work they do lightly; they are all well aware that they often literally have someone’s life in their hands. I saw my dad when he lost a patient–he was devastated.
Susan E. Loggans & Associates - loggans@logganslaw.com
Susan E. Loggans & Associates represents the Quaids in their lawsuit against Baxter Healthcare Corporation. We applaud them for their efforts in speaking out about pharmaceutical safety, defective products, medication errors, and other issues impacting patient safety. Furthermore, we commend the Quaids for starting a foundation dedicated to minimizing medical errors.
At Susan E. Loggans & Associates we believe that every person has a right to recovery if he or she has been wronged.
http://www.logganslaw.com