Health News
- Health Care's Culture Doesn't Encourage Doctors To Report Medical Errors Of Colleagues; Article Says Patients Should Come First
By Melissa Patrick Kentucky Health News Doctors are often aware of their colleagues' medical errors, but fail to report them because of a culture that does not support or encourage such actions, Marshall Allen writes for ProPublica,...
- Kentucky And Online Audiences Hear Discussion Of Proposed System For Patients To Report Medical Errors; Comments Due July 8
By Molly Burchett Kentucky Health News The Obama administration is creating a new system for patients to report medical mistakes because existing systems fail to do so, and if all goes as planned, the pilot program will launch this fall, a federal official...
- Kentucky Hospitals Score Mostly Bs And Cs On Hospital Safety Scorecard; Most In U.s. Earned An A Or B
In an analysis of the nation's hospitals and their safety records, many of Kentucky's health care facilities have some shortcomings. A study by the Leapfrog Group finds that the vast majority of the state's hospitals score a B or C in overall...
- Infections, Other Safety Issues Plague Hospitals, Maybe More So When Nursing Is Cut; Here's A Good Series On It
The Centers for Disease Control has reported that nearly 1 million patient-safety incidents, including infections that patients acquired in hospitals, occurred among Medicare patients over the years 2006, 2007, 2008. In all, the incidents -- which represented...
- Hospitals Are Not Reporting Cases Of Harm To Patients; Electronic Health Records May Be Key To Solving The Problem
By Tara Kaprowy Kentucky Health News Hospitals aren't reporting cases in which medical care harmed a patient, making it difficult for providers to identify problems and fix them, according to a report to be released by the U.S. Department of...
Health News
Hospital employees report only 1 of 7 medical errors, study finds
In keeping with other studies on the subject, a new report shows hospital employees only report and recognize one out of every seven medical errors, accidents or other events that harm Medicare patients. "Yet even after hospitals investigate preventable injuries and infections that have been reported, they rarely change their practices to prevent repetition of the 'adverse events'," reports Robert Pear of The New York Times.
While hospitals serving Medicare patients are supposed to track and analyze the cause of medical errors and most hospitals do have a system in place to inform administrators about adverse events, "Hospital staff did not report most events that harmed Medicare beneficiaries," said Daniel R. Levinson, inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services and author of the report.
Levinson said more than 130,000 beneficiaries were subject to one or more adverse events in hospitals in one month. An adverse event includes medical errors, severe bedsores, hospital-acquired infections, delirium as a result from too many painkillers, or excessive bleeding because blood thinners were used improperly.
The study involved the input of independent doctors, who reviewed 293 cases in which patients had been harmed. Forty of the cases were reported to hospital managers and 28 were investigated by hospitals, "but only five led to changes in policies or practices," Pear reports.
One of the major issues is that hospital employees don't recognize when a patient is harmed, Levinson said. In some incidents, "employees assumed someone else would report the episode, or they thought it was so common that it did not need to be reported," Pear reports. In other cases, employees thought an event was so unusual it wouldn't be likely to recur.
In answer, Medicare officials said they will come up with a list of "reportable events" for hospitals and employees to use. Hospitals, in turn, should give detailed instructions to employees about what kinds of events should be reported. (Read more)
- Health Care's Culture Doesn't Encourage Doctors To Report Medical Errors Of Colleagues; Article Says Patients Should Come First
By Melissa Patrick Kentucky Health News Doctors are often aware of their colleagues' medical errors, but fail to report them because of a culture that does not support or encourage such actions, Marshall Allen writes for ProPublica,...
- Kentucky And Online Audiences Hear Discussion Of Proposed System For Patients To Report Medical Errors; Comments Due July 8
By Molly Burchett Kentucky Health News The Obama administration is creating a new system for patients to report medical mistakes because existing systems fail to do so, and if all goes as planned, the pilot program will launch this fall, a federal official...
- Kentucky Hospitals Score Mostly Bs And Cs On Hospital Safety Scorecard; Most In U.s. Earned An A Or B
In an analysis of the nation's hospitals and their safety records, many of Kentucky's health care facilities have some shortcomings. A study by the Leapfrog Group finds that the vast majority of the state's hospitals score a B or C in overall...
- Infections, Other Safety Issues Plague Hospitals, Maybe More So When Nursing Is Cut; Here's A Good Series On It
The Centers for Disease Control has reported that nearly 1 million patient-safety incidents, including infections that patients acquired in hospitals, occurred among Medicare patients over the years 2006, 2007, 2008. In all, the incidents -- which represented...
- Hospitals Are Not Reporting Cases Of Harm To Patients; Electronic Health Records May Be Key To Solving The Problem
By Tara Kaprowy Kentucky Health News Hospitals aren't reporting cases in which medical care harmed a patient, making it difficult for providers to identify problems and fix them, according to a report to be released by the U.S. Department of...