When we receive treatment at a hospital, we expect high quality service. After being discharged, we have an expectation that the hospital has provided the best care available for our money, and that hopefully it has restored our health.

Sadly, this is an idealistic view of an American hospital. In many hospitals nationwide, patients suffer the consequences of poor medical service with preventable surgical complications, hospital readmissions and higher bills.

According to the 2012 documentary Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare, hospital-acquired illness from medical errors causes about 187,000 annual deaths in the United States, a statistic that easily ranks it as the third largest cause of death in the country.

In a specific example, a 2012 study of Texas Health Resources, one of the most prestigious hospital systems in Texas, revealed many instances of hospital-acquired illnesses due to poor care. Out of the 34,256 patients in 2010 who underwent surgery at a THR hospital, 1,820 of them developed preventable complications such as blood clots, pneumonias and surgical infections during their stays.

Originally, they were to remain in the hospital for about three to four days, but after their complications, their average stay increased to two weeks. The financial consequences of such cases were notable too, as their average hospital costs increased by about $30,500. This extra amount would devastate patients with little to no insurance, and could even raise premiums and out-of-pocket expenses for insured patients.

On the national level, these added costs waste resources by large proportions. Insurance programs like Medicare, which is already threatened with bankruptcy, will only suffer greater strain as wasteful medical errors consume more of its scarce dollars. America faces pressing problems in the quality of its medical care, and if left unresolved, they will only worsen our health care and its economic sustainability.

An underlying cause of these problems rests in America's health care reimbursement system. Most health care providers are still reimbursed on a fee-for-service system, in which they receive payments for each medical service administered. This payment system not only encourages providers to give more treatments for extra money, but also potentially removes the incentive to reduce preventable mistakes, since providers would profit from medical complications and longer hospital stays anyway. In short, it emphasizes quantity of care over quality of care.

Another problem relates to the disconnected nature of our entire medical system. Human health involves an entire collection of interacting organ systems, so care needs to be better coordinated across multiple medical fields. A study by the National Institutes of Health reports that the current system promotes "piecemeal, poor quality care," largely brought about by the continued use of primitive paper medical records and information systems, which in turn disrupt the flow of comprehensive medical information among providers. As a result, many providers lack access to sufficient information for making appropriate clinical decisions. In the end, they may administer care that is repetitive, counter-productive, and even dangerous, adding to the risk of medical complications. This is especially harmful for patients with multiple chronic conditions, who require long-term care from multiple providers and extensive medical coordination to maintain their health.

The path to reducing hospital-acquired complications is complex, but the country can take a number of preliminary steps.
First, we must phase out the fee-for-service system that simply encourages quantity over quality. The 2010 health care reform takes the initiative by reducing Medicare payments for preventable hospital readmissions, but it is only a start. Long-term initiatives should reward providers for higher quality, as the THR researchers suggest, and implement payment systems such as capitation. This is a payment setup in which a provider is granted a fixed sum of money over a period to pay for a patient's health care. Under such a setup, providers will be more motivated to provide higher quality care, since they would not profit from counterproductive services and may even lose money from them.

Second, we need a system in which different providers can effectively communicate, coordinate and produce meaningful information for efficient care, as well as prevent careless mistakes. In recent years, the health care system has started to adopt technology such as electronic health records to facilitate unity among providers and better access to comprehensive medical information. The adoption has been slow however, as many providers face problems such as financial difficulty in transitioning to a new technology system, so the health care community needs to exert greater efforts to overcome this obstacle.

Many health care critics, including those documented in Escape Fire, have pointed out that America has a sick care rather than a health care system. Hospitals and doctors are supposed to help people restore and keep their health, rather than sicken them so that they can be readmitted more often. I will not deny that with any medical procedure, there can be risks beyond our control, but the fact that patients are suffering because of preventable problems is unacceptable. In short, we have a mission to put the "health" back in "health care," and to live up to the idea that America actually provides superior care to its patients.
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