Q. Why was APRA established?
A. APRA was established to help people protect their money and their lives by:
- warning about the dangers in our medical system;
- providing information and tools designed to help people protect themselves from preventable medical harm and predatory medical billing;
- developing and implementing unique, demand-side solutions to patient safety issues, and
- agitating for change to improve patient safety and reduce predatory medical billing.
Q. What are APRA’s goals?
A. Our primary goals are to: educate and inform consumers about how to protect themselves and their families from the hidden dangers in our healthcare system; motivate hospitals and other medical facilities to improve patient safety; and, agitate for reasonable and effective patient rights so that people are safer, both physically and financially, whenever they seek medical treatment.
Q. How does APRA expect to achieve those goals?
A. Our programs and plan of action are consistent with our goals. With support from individuals, foundations, and corporate sponsors we anticipate success in reducing unnecessary deaths and financial harm to patients.
Q. What motivated APRA’s founder to establish APRA?
A. The founder’s mother died as a result of a preventable medical error in a hospital. After a lengthy investigation, he realized that even though health care in our country is advancing technologically our healthcare system is deteriorating, placing people at unreasonable and unjustifiable risk of physical and financial harm. Medical services provided to the average person in many parts of our country are too often supplied as if we were a third-world country, even though health care consumes approximately 18% of our nation’s GDP, the most in the world.
Even after the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) nothing much changed. Costs continue to rise, quality continues to decline and millions remain uninsured or underinsured.
The failure of our healthcare system is a danger to all Americans but most particularly to minorities and seniors who have a greater need for medical services. There are few measures in place to protect people from preventable physical or financial harm in hospitals or any other medical facility: no effective regulations or oversight, no accountability, and no transparency. As a result, the estimates are that up to 440,000 men, women and children are dying in our hospitals each year from preventable medical errors, the third leading cause of death, and medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy, even for those with medical insurance.
Change is needed to protect our citizens and our country.