California hospital mistakes are now public
The L.A. Times reorted that 1002 preventable incidents happened in California between July 2007 and May of this year. Results are from a new California state law that makes it mandatory to report preventable incidents. The California legislation was passed in 2006.
These incidents are also known as “never events” because they never should happen. They include bedsores, leaving objects in after operations, operating on the wrong patient, operating on the wrong body part, improperly connecting equipment, prescribing the wrong drugs, etc. They result in serious injury and death.
Preventable incidents, called adverse events, harm hundreds of patients in California hospitals each year. Unlike California, most states do not require them to be reported. Other states that require reporting are Maine, Massuchsetts, Pennyslvania, New York, Minnesota, Washington, Vermont.
The legislation requires California hospitals to inform state regulators of occurences of 28 types of dangerous mistakes. By 2015 the public health department is supposed to post the information on the internet, although officials hope to start publishing it sooner.
Some suspect the 1002 number may be low since hospitals typically underreport. becausethis number may be larger than the reported by California. Dr. Donald Berwick, the president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, a Massachusetts nonprofit, said that “as many as 15 million patients each year are harmed in hospitals.”
Beginning in October of this year, Centers for Medicaid and Medicare has said they will stop reimbursing hospitals for eight kinds of mistakes. These include bedsores, objects left in patients, and infections acquired from surgery and from catheters.
Info from L.A.Times Hospital mistakes go public. 6/30/08
