TUESDAY, April 8 (HealthDay News) -- From 2004 through 2006,
patient safety errors resulted in 238,337 potentially preventable
deaths of U.S. Medicare patients and cost the Medicare program $8.8
billion, according to the fifth annual Patient Safety in American
Hospitals Study.
This analysis of 41 million Medicare patient records, released
April 8 by HealthGrades, a health care ratings organization, found
that patients treated at top-performing hospitals were, on average,
43 percent less likely to experience one or more medical errors
than patients at the poorest-performing hospitals.
The overall medical error rate was about 3 percent for all
Medicare patients, which works out to about 1.1 million patient
safety incidents during the three years included in the
analysis.
Among the other findings:
- Patients who experienced a patient safety incident had a 20
percent chance of dying as a result of the incident.
- The overall death rate among patients who experienced one or
more patient safety incidents fell by almost 5 percent between 2004
and 2006.
- However, over that time, there were increases in post-operative
respiratory failure, post-operative pulmonary embolism or deep vein
thrombosis, post-operative sepsis (blood infection), and
post-operative abdominal wound separation/splitting.
- The most common types of medical errors were bed sores, failure
to rescue, and post-operative respiratory failure. Together, they
accounted for 63.4 percent of incidents. Failure to rescue improved
11.1 percent from 2004 to 2006, while both bed sores and
post-operative respiratory failure worsened during that time.
- Of the 270,491 deaths that occurred among patients who
experienced one or more patient safety incidents, 238,337 were
potentially preventable, the researchers said.
- If all hospitals performed at the level of the top-ranked
hospitals, about 220,106 patient safety incidents and 37,214
patient deaths could have been avoided, and about $2 billion could
have been saved.
"While many U.S. hospitals have taken extensive action to
prevent medical errors, the prevalence of likely preventable
patient safety incidents is taking a costly toll on our health care
systems -- in both lives and dollars," Dr. Samantha Collier,
HealthGrades' chief medical officer and primary author of the
study, said in a prepared statement.
"HealthGrades has documented in numerous studies the significant
and largely unchanging gap between top-performing and
poor-performing hospitals. It is imperative that hospitals
recognize the benchmarks set by the Distinguished Hospitals for
Patient Safety are achievable and associated with higher safety and
markedly lower cost," Collier said.
Starting Oct. 1, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services will stop reimbursing hospitals for the treatment of eight
major preventable errors, including objects left in the body after
surgery and certain kinds of post-surgical infections.
More information
The American Academy of Family Physicians outlines how patients
can
prevent medical errors.
