Hi isohatethem, thanks for your comment on our stories about the medical field in Las Vegas. I wanted to note that we do not publish stories that are not true, and we do not exaggerate them, either (though we have been accused of doing so by some in the medical industry).

I am careful to ensure that these cases actually did take place. In the case of this wrong-site surgery, the doctor and hospital do not deny that it happened, they just disagree about who is to blame. Every time I write one of these stories, I go directly to the doctors and hospitals involved for their comment. In most cases, I also verify that the incidents took place by acquiring the patient's medical records.

If you want to see all of our recent coverage about patient harm in Las Vegas hospitals, go to this link: http://www.lasvegassun.com/hospital-care...

Marshall

Hi RoboGod, thanks for your comment. Dr. McDonald was always on his cell phone because he's on hand to answer any questions about anesthesiology or patient safety cases. So it's actually a good thing that he's within reach of the staff that need to reach him. That's actually one of the innovations they came up with to make things safer there -- provide immediate contact to doctors.

Hi BrianJ - thanks for the comment on my story.

It is true that private insurance companies pay for these hospital-acquired infections and injuries, but Medicare has stopped paying for 10 different types of preventable harm. We focused on these particular 10 in part one of our "Do No Harm" series. You can see the link to that story here: http://www.lasvegassun.com/hospital-care...

Patrick - You possess ignorance in abundance and seem proud to put it on display. I would dismiss your wild allegations, but you're questioning my integrity.

You accuse me of jumping to conclusions, but do so yourself. Let me assure you that I am the one who has been driving this project, based entirely on more than 170 interviews with health care experts and insiders and years of in-depth reporting about health care in Nevada. The health care sources have been directing this work, not my higher-ups. I do not get any type of mandates from above.

I write about health care from a patient-centered perspective, and that's been the foundation of this entire series. Hospital care in Las Vegas has become a joke -- "Where do you go for good health care in Las Vegas?" "The airport." -- and that's not acceptable to anyone with a conscience. So I've been exploring the reasons for this.

The story does not say that nonprofit medicine is better than for-profit medicine. But the quest for profits does relate to short-staffing of nurses and non-academic medicine, which has a direct effect on patient care. The story also points out that Las Vegas is missing an academic medical center, there is not effective oversight, and that hospitals often do not learn from their own mistakes. Those issues combine to help explain our substandard hospital care here.

If you really care to understand these issues, including how the Sun operates, then please call me at 259-2330. I enjoy being informed by by people with all types of points of view. I would be interested in hearing what you've been doing to improve the quality of health care here.

Hi Patrick_R_Gibbons, thanks for your comment on my story, but please don't make presumptions about my supposed "agenda." Please call me at 259-2330 if you would like to know what I think about these subjects, rather than making baseless allegations about my reason for writing this series of stories.

The Sun focused on PREVENTABLE injuries, infections and surgical accidents precisely because it eliminates the need to compare facilities to one another. The plumb line is ZERO: these are things that should not be happening to patients in hospitals.

Unfortunately, the medical industry nationwide keeps the rates and number of these preventable injuries and infections secret from consumers. How is competition among facilities supposed to take place when relevant information is withheld?

The withholding of this information that the public has a right to know was a large motivation for reporting this project the way we did. Yes, consumers can get limited information from HHS and Hospital Compare. I encourage people to go to the sites that are available. But it's ignorant to suggest that consumers don't have a right to know more than they are currently being told about quality and patient safety in health care facilities.

I look forward to your phone call!

About the $800 fine. Those fines are predetermined in Nevada law. That means the regulators just follow the laws that have been established by the legislators. So the correct people to ask about this would be the politicians, not the regulators.

Hi jhook, we've got the rates for the various incidents under "see the results" on this main page for the project: http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/health/h...

To lasvegan2008 (and everyone else): You are absolutely right that our sources are the doctors, nurses, patients and other health care stakeholders and insiders -- most who are never identified (at their request). I could not do my job without them and my hat is off to them. A journalist could not do ANY investigative story without the help of many sources. I admire their courage and their willingness to speak to me in private about the things they are seeing. I appreciate them and do not take them for granted.

It would be too cumbersome to thank "all the sources" at the end of every story, so we won't be doing that. Just know that we know it's impossible without the sacrifice of many people.

Also, I would appreciate if more folks who know what's really going on would be willing to get in touch with me. You can call me at 259-2330. I only insist that you tell the truth!

Hi samson1, I appreciate your comment.

As we've said in the stories, it's impossible to make the type of comparisons we all desire because the data is kept differently in other places and little of it is public. As Dr. John Santa from Consumers Union told me, it creates a "tower of Babel" type problem when trying to compare because everyone is comparing different numbers. So we're not leaving any important information out. That info does not exist in a way that allows for comparison.

Please also remember, as Santa from Consumers Union also said, that the real comparison for these type of events is zero. They are all preventable and should not be happening. Comparing us to other regions is the wrong comparison.

As for your allegations about us being biased from the outset -- as we've documented in this package of stories, Nevada hospitals have the worst 30-day readmissions rates in the country for Medicare patients. That was revealed in a study by HealthInsight, the Medicare quality improvement group here in Las Vegas.

You can see that report by checking out the "documents" tab on this site. It's called "Health Insight Readmission Report." According to the report, 25 percent of Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries are readmitted within 30 days, compared to an average of 19 percent nationally. Those readmissions cost $203 million and up to half of them are preventable, the report said.

We also rank poorly by other national measures, and the Health Services Coalition, the group of 24 self-insured companies here in Nevada, is pushing the hospitals to improve, as well.

Hi dominicki, you can see the rates for the various incidents using the interactive graphic. Sort it by "event" and then click on each event, and it will give you the rate of their occurrence.

These are relatively rare events, so the rate is either per 10,000, per 1,000 or per 100, depending on what made the most sense.

Also in the interactive graphic, you can sort by "hospital" and mouse over each hospital's results to get the total number of each incident by facility.

The total numbers of each event (and the rates, which are shaded) are probably easiest to see as a group in the static graphic with all the types of events and all the hospitals. That's also under the "See the results" subhead on this page.