AARP offices some sound advice on avoiding harmful medical mistakes. Medical mistakes are more common than most of us realize, and the medication you are on, or the procedure you are going to undergo can had disastrous consequences if errors are made. Many medications require doctors to constantly monitor you, especially with the cholesterol lowering statins, whose usage is questionable. Other medications designed to regulate the heart, blood pressure and other symptoms can cause serious complication when your body changes its own chemistry in response to a long term usage of the medication. Many people because of the new Medicare rules are supposed to be released with detailed discharge plans, but unfortunately, these plans are not always carried out as intended. Basically, the current system even with our electronic record keeping systems are way too complicated, and as a result, errors can and will occur. AARP believes that if we are better informed consumers of healthcare, we can prevent many of these mistakes from happening. Check out the article here 12 Medical Mistakes That Can Harm You The health care system has tried to battle medical errors, but mistakes still happen by Rich Laliberte, AARP Bulletin, September 1, 2016 A Wakeup Call for Safety Health care providers seek to heal the sick, not harm them. Yet, the Journal of Patient Safety found in 2013 that preventable safety failures in hospitals kill 210,000 to 400,000 each year. That represented a sobering increase from the 1999 Institute of Medicine estimate that up to 98,000 hospitalized people die each year from preventable errors. Here"™s a dirty dozen key sources of harm. Read more