Even during this recent era of high employment and relative economic prosperity, the number of workers covered by employer-provided health insurance actually decreased, from 63.9 percent in 1987 to 60.4 percent in 1996. Patient Safety Issues - All of us who work in hospitals should be concerned about patient safety issues. More than 1,300,000 people are injured in U.S. hospitals each year, and 180,000 die of these injuries. Much more needs to be done to address these troubling statistics. At this juncture, the federal government seems hell-bent on a compliance jihad.
Regulators are as deft as anyone at discerning the public's dissatisfaction with health care.
They sense, perhaps correctly, that there is much amiss with the health care system. Lacking the consensus and the legislation required for broad structural reform, they concoct ever more elaborate regulatory systems, in an effort to solve the problem. When your only tool is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. Conclusion Some of the more potent dangers we now confront will require collaborative efforts at effective advocacy on the part of AMCs and their supporters. There are other threats to our well-being in the current marketplace.