George Meder

Five years ago my three-year-old daughter, Andie Mei, died during a procedure to insert tubes in her ear to help with chronic ear infections. The doctors' errors were compounded by the fact that the alarm on the monitor was not being operated in a reasonable and customary manner.

This has been an enormous tragedy for our family. We have a small Christmas tree in our living room to remind us of the bright light she brought to our lives.

Andie Mei's death is neither an exception nor an aberration. Complacency, arrogance and simple negligence claim the lives of patients every day. It is critical for healthcare consumers to understand this. The public must begin to act to protect their own interests.

Rosemary Gibson wrote a book about medical malpractice called The Wall of Silence. Silence is exactly what confronted us when this disaster happened. My daughter entered surgery in the morning and declared dead that night. No one apologized; no one admitted a mistake had happened. It took years for the Department of Public Health and the Medical Examining Board to address the problem.

When they did act, it was inadequate. We lost a child. But the physician who practiced such bad medicine was fined just $5,000 and placed on probation. It is little wonder that CT ranks 40th in the country in getting rid of bad doctors. Only 5% of the doctors commit 50% of the errors. Yet the system is set up to protects its own. It puts the public at enormous risk.

I do not know if the anesthesiologist has committed other errors. I also do not know if the history of the surgeon who did the operation. He has left the state and no action has been taken against him. When serious malpractice happens, the physicians often do leave the state and set up practice elsewhere. Because these doctors are no longer a threat to a states' residents, Departments of Public Health don't act because their responsibility for the public health stops at the state line. The National Practitioners Data Bank, which can only be accessed by hospitals and Departments of Health has a 61% error rate.

We need to know when error happens, how it is handled and in what hospitals or surgical centers. We need to be able to choose doctors based on their malpractice history. As a society we can do this. Because the public needed to have confidence in the US airline system, the industry conceived a strict quality control method. When a plane crashes, or there is even a near miss, there is a national organization that analyzes the crash. We need to have the same system to address medical error. More people are dying unnecessarily in the hands of our healthcare system than on our roads. That is the tragedy.