Tea at Trianon: One in Four Hospitalized Medicare Patients 'Harmed' in Hospital

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, August 3, 2025

One in Four Hospitalized Medicare Patients 'Harmed' in Hospital

From Sharyl's Substack:

25% of hospitalized Medicare patients suffered harm in hospital
43% of those cases were preventable
Teaching hospitals “missed” cases of harm at a far greater rate than other hospitals. In a telling revelation about the state of patient safety in U.S. hospitals, a new report from the Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General (OIG) has uncovered startling proof that hospitals failed to document nearly half of all “patient harm events” suffered by Medicare patients.
The report highlights how this oversight stems from inconsistent interpretations as to what constitutes "harm," and leaves hospitals without crucial dat to prevent future incidents. It also arguably gives them plausible deniability when they don’t fix their issues.
Read on for details. (Read more.)