Medical errors common in hospitals

Thursday April 9, 2009 (foodconsumer.org) -- You may want to be more careful picking out your hospital next time you need one, according to a newly published study by HealthGrades, an independent healthcare ratings organization.

"Patient safety incidents are one of the leading causes of death in the U.S." wrote Dr. Rick May, consultant at HealthGrades. "The sad fact is that many, if not most, of these errors are preventable."

Approximately one in ten Medicare patients died from medical error, said the report released on April 7.

The errors not only cost lives, said May, they were also associated with more than $6.9 billion in wasted healthcare cost.

In its sixth annual study, the company analyzed patient safety among Medicare patients in all of the 5,000 non-federal national hospitals and found an alarming fact: "Between 2005 and 2007 there were 97,755 actual in-hospital deaths that occurred among patients who experienced one or more of the 15 patient safety events."

"Patients shouldn't die or experience unnecessary harm as a result of medical errors in hospitals," said May.

The study found that there were more than 900,000 patient safety events between 2005 and 2007, or 2.3 percent of the 38 million Medicare hospitalizations.

Those figures translate into one reported safety event every 1.7 minutes, according to the study.

A safety event, or medical error, includes 15 indicators developed by the federal government's Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The errors committed by most hospitals included complications of anesthesia, bed sores, infections, and many post-operative problems ranging from hip-fracture to sepsis.

While eight of these patient safety indicators improved during the two-year study, seven indicators worsened.

"Some of the most common and most serious indicators worsened," reported the study. Those indicators included bed sores, respiratory failure and pulmonary embolism.

On the upside, this year 242 hospitals, or about five percent of the nation's hospitals, were awarded a "Patient Safety Excellence Award" by the organization.

"The good news is," said May, "that there are hospitals that are doing an amazing job when it comes to patient safety and we commend them."

Patients treated at top-performing hospitals had a 43 percent lower chance of experiencing a medical error, stated the report.

For more information, go to Healthgrades.com.

(By Sheilah Downey, and edited by Heather Kelley)