Hospital errors still common

Despite a decade of media and public attention, medical errors in hospitals—including those that lead to serious harm and even death—continue an alarming rate, according to a major federal government study out this week.

The study, by the Office of Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, found that one in seven Medicare patients who are hospitalized each month suffer at least one "adverse event." That comes to 134,000 people a month or 1.6 million a year. Of those, 15,000 people a month (180,000 a year) died as a direct result of the error or the error contributed to their death.

These "events" included surgical and catheter infections, drug-dosing errors, falls, serious bed sores, too much IV fluid, equipment malfunctions, excessive bleeding, poor wound  care, and surgical mistakes, like operating on the wrong patient or the wrong part of the body. The study could only identify 44 percent of the errors as "clearly or likely preventable," which should not give hospitals license to ignore most of these harmful events. The goal should be to eliminate all of them.

"This is simply unacceptable," said Donald Berwick, M.D., administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. He said HHS would start by broadening the definition of adverse events, as recommended by the Office of Inspector General's report. The report also recommends enhancing efforts to identify errors and imposing financial penalties on hospitals for errors. Both steps are also promoted by the new health-care reform law.

Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports, released a statement saying that one reason the problem continues unabated is that most hospitals do not have to publicly report their medical-error rates. Twenty-five states and the District of Columbia collect data from hospitals on the incidence of certain errors. But only six states have disclosed hospital-specific information to the public.  

"Most Americans have no way of knowing whether their hospital is doing a good job preventing medical errors," said Lisa McGiffert, director of Consumers Union's Safe Patient Project. "We need public reporting of medical errors so we can hold hospitals accountable for keeping patients safe." She said all states should also initiate programs to validate the reported data.

The study's numbers derive from a detailed examination by a team of physicians and experts of the cases and medical records of a random sample of 780 Medicare patients discharged from hospitals in October 2008.   

—Steve Findlay, senior health policy analyst

Read more about how to prevent infections while in the hospital and sign the petition asking your local hospitals to help reduce preventable infections and deaths.