’Normalized deviance’ can lead to tragedy

Healthcare in Nevada seems to suffer from a "normalization of deviance," according to this article in the Las Vegas Sun. In two recent high-profile cases, trained professionals apparently ignored strong evidence of wrongdoing. Fifty thousand people had to be tested for infectious diseases because of a hepatitis C outbreak caused by unsafe injection practices at Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada. And for years, doctors in Las Vegas were profiting by overworking foreign doctors, underpaying them, and ordering them away from the medically needy patients they were supposed to serve so they could bring in more revenue in hospitals, say the authors.