Medical Errors Still Common in U.S. Hospitals

A number of news stories have reported on the April 2009 release of the HealthGrades "Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study". HealthGrades is the leading healthcare ratings organization, providing ratings and profiles of hospitals, nursing homes and physicians to consumers, corporations, health plans and hospitals.

The new study reports that between 2005 and 2007, 913,215 total patient safety events were recorded among Medicare beneficiaries alone. This represents 2.3 percent of the nearly 38 million Medicare hospitalizations. These errors accounted for $6.9 billion in excess Medicare healthcare costs. Tragically researchers found 97,755 actual in-hospital deaths among patients who experienced one or more of the safety errors. Of these deaths, 92,882 could be directly attributable to a patient safety event and could have been avoided.

The study also showed a large discrepancy between hospitals noting that patients treated at top-performing hospitals had, on average, a 43% lower chance of experiencing one or more medical errors compared to the poorest-performing hospitals.

Overall progress has been made in some areas, while in others the risk is worse. The net effect is that the overall incidence rates remained essentially the same as last year's, with rates for seven indicators getting worse and eight improving.

Rick May, MD, senior physician consultant at HealthGrades and co-author of the study commented, "Patient safety incidents are one of the leading causes of death in the U.S. The sad fact is that many, if not most, of these errors are preventable. Patients shouldn’t die or experience unnecessary harm as a result of medical errors in hospitals."

The researchers of this study summed up their concerns by stating, "Hospitals must continue to study patient safety, design, and enhance patient safety processes until there are zero events, and recognize that a 2% error rate can no longer be status quo."