American hospitals are making little overall progress in preventing medical errors that injure or kill patients, a study released Tuesday concludes.
Though hospitals have improved in some areas, the report shows no improvements or declines in several others. Overall, researchers say they found a 3% increase in the rate of medical errors in hospitals between 2003 and 2005 and that the institutions could potentially have prevented nearly 250,000 patient deaths during that time period.
An Institute of Medicine report concluded in 2000 that up to 98,000 Americans die each year because of medical mistakes. The report called on governments, doctors, and private industry to launch a massive effort to increase error prevention.
Samantha Collier, MD, the author of Tuesday’s report, says a few hospitals have improved at preventing errors and cutting the injuries associated with them.
But she says the report shows that little or no improvement in overall error rates across the country.
“We really haven’t made much impact at all at the national level. We’re not seeing the impact we should have after the IOM report,” says Collier, the chief medical officer at HealthGrades, a private health study group headquartered in Colorado.
The study shows nearly 1.2 million potentially preventable “patient safety incidents” in a database of more than 40 million Medicare hospitalizations between 2003 and 2005.
Hospitals improved in several areas of preventable injury, including hip fractures after surgery and death during lower-risk medical procedures, the report shows.
But injury rates worsened in several other areas. Pressure sores, or bed sores, increased by 9% over the study period, while infections caused by medical procedures increased more than 12%, the study shows.
At the same time, rates of postsurgical severe blood infection that can affect multiple organs, known as sepsis, went up by more than 34%.
Officials from the American Hospital Association were not immediately available to comment on the study.
The study did not look at medication errors, thought to be the leading cause of medical mistakes leading to patient injuries.
Government agencies, including Medicare, are pushing hospitals and nursing homes to report quality data to the public. But Collier says government and nonprofit efforts were largely at the beginning stages and have not yet been effective.
“We’re definitely heading in the right direction. But I think we have a consensus that not much has changed,” she tells WebMD.
Hopeful Signs?
But another study released Tuesday suggests hospitals are making some broad improvements. It found an average of 43% of hospitals lowered in-hospital death rates between 2001 and 2005. Five percent of institutions had worse death rates, concludes the study, released by the Commonwealth Fund.
“I am reluctant to say nothing is improving, but at the same time I don’t want to paint a rosy picture,” says Jack Meyer, PhD, the study’s main author.
Meyer says that most hospitals “now know they have a problem” with patient safety. But the industry has done a poor job of transmitting practices of innovative hospitals to poorly performing ones, he says.
“We need a kind of a Marshall Plan here,” says Meyer, referring to Allied efforts to rebuild Europe following World War II. “It’s hard, and it costs money. This is a 10-year plan.”
Though hospitals have improved in some areas, the report shows no improvements or declines in several others. Overall, researchers say they found a 3% increase in the rate of medical errors in hospitals between 2003 and 2005 and that the institutions could potentially have prevented nearly 250,000 patient deaths during that time period.
An Institute of Medicine report concluded in 2000 that up to 98,000 Americans die each year because of medical mistakes. The report called on governments, doctors, and private industry to launch a massive effort to increase error prevention.
Samantha Collier, MD, the author of Tuesday’s report, says a few hospitals have improved at preventing errors and cutting the injuries associated with them.
But she says the report shows that little or no improvement in overall error rates across the country.
“We really haven’t made much impact at all at the national level. We’re not seeing the impact we should have after the IOM report,” says Collier, the chief medical officer at HealthGrades, a private health study group headquartered in Colorado.
The study shows nearly 1.2 million potentially preventable “patient safety incidents” in a database of more than 40 million Medicare hospitalizations between 2003 and 2005.
Hospitals improved in several areas of preventable injury, including hip fractures after surgery and death during lower-risk medical procedures, the report shows.
But injury rates worsened in several other areas. Pressure sores, or bed sores, increased by 9% over the study period, while infections caused by medical procedures increased more than 12%, the study shows.
At the same time, rates of postsurgical severe blood infection that can affect multiple organs, known as sepsis, went up by more than 34%.
Officials from the American Hospital Association were not immediately available to comment on the study.
The study did not look at medication errors, thought to be the leading cause of medical mistakes leading to patient injuries.
Government agencies, including Medicare, are pushing hospitals and nursing homes to report quality data to the public. But Collier says government and nonprofit efforts were largely at the beginning stages and have not yet been effective.
“We’re definitely heading in the right direction. But I think we have a consensus that not much has changed,” she tells WebMD.
Hopeful Signs?
But another study released Tuesday suggests hospitals are making some broad improvements. It found an average of 43% of hospitals lowered in-hospital death rates between 2001 and 2005. Five percent of institutions had worse death rates, concludes the study, released by the Commonwealth Fund.
“I am reluctant to say nothing is improving, but at the same time I don’t want to paint a rosy picture,” says Jack Meyer, PhD, the study’s main author.
Meyer says that most hospitals “now know they have a problem” with patient safety. But the industry has done a poor job of transmitting practices of innovative hospitals to poorly performing ones, he says.
“We need a kind of a Marshall Plan here,” says Meyer, referring to Allied efforts to rebuild Europe following World War II. “It’s hard, and it costs money. This is a 10-year plan.”
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