Why the decline of autopsies is dangerous:
Without autopsies to confirm patients’ precise causes of death, public health officials say, the health-care system overall suffers. Erroneous information sometimes ends up on death certificates. Broad categories of disease such as cancer are probably accurate, but specifics such as the type of cancer may not be, said Robert Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch of the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.
“These data are used to set public health priorities, to develop public health programs and allocate resources,” Anderson said. “We do the best that we can given the information we have, but if you put bad information into the system, you’re going to get bad information out.”
An earlier look at this trend here.
