Medicine on Trial: The Appalling Story of Ineptitude, Malfeasance, Neglect, and Arrogance

Incompetence on the part of some medical practitioners and institutional mismanagementincluding hospital-acquired infections credited with the deaths of 100,000 patients a yearare among the charges leveled here against providers of health care in this shocking expose. Levin, a Yale School of Medicine and Public Health professor, and his coauthors are directors of the People's Medical Society, a consumer health organization. Their aim is to spur consumers to regain control over health care and to stimulate reform within the medical establishment. Besides charging a widespread impairment of medical personnel due to alcohol and drugs, the authors point out the alarming number of misdiagnoses, many of which they attribute to replacement of human skills with dangerous or defective technology. Among their proposals for reform are a Medical Practice Act to assure greater disclosure of information to patients, uniform hospital quality care and sanitation standards, along with changes in medical educationall of which, they insist, should be accomplished with greater consumer involvement. (April)