50 Ways To Survive Your Next Trip To The Hospital

From medication mix-ups to surgical errors, dangerous falls to deadly infections, hospital hazards can be harmful to your health. Here’s how to stay safe and get well.

- Michelle Crouch

As many as 440,000 Americans die every year from medical errors and infections contracted in the hospital. Combined, they are the third leading cause of death in the United States.

Your best defense? Take charge of your care as much as possible. Ask lots of questions, take tons of notes, and have a family member or friend there to advocate on your behalf.

“You are part of the care team,” says Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD, former senior vice president for patient safety and quality at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore. “This is your body, and you have wisdom.”

While some risks are beyond your control, these lifesaving tips will help protect against some of the biggest perils you face in the hospital.

CHOOSE THE RIGHT PLACE FOR YOUR PROCEDURE

Don’t just pick the closest facility. In an emergency, of course, you want to get to the nearest hospital—fast. But if you’re scheduling a surgery or procedure, selecting the right hospital, medical center, or surgery center could save your life, even if it means paying more to go out of network. A 2016 study in the journal PLOS One found that patients at the worst American hospitals were three times more likely to die during their stay (and 13 times more likely to have complications) than patients with the same health problem at the best hospitals. Three key questions to ask:

(1) How many times last year did the hospital perform the surgery you’re getting? Multiple studies show that the more often a hospital does a procedure, the better the outcome will be. You are significantly more likely to have complications—sometimes fatal ones—in a facility that performs the surgery only once or twice a year, Dr. Pronovost says.