U.S. Hospital Errors Continue to Rise

Patient safety incidents in U.S. hospitals increased by 3% between 2003 and 2005, and the error gap between best- and worst-performing hospitals remained wide, a new study reported.

The fourth annual HealthGrades patient safety in American hospitals study, released by HealthGrades (Golden, CO, USA), an independent healthcare ratings company examined over 40 million Medicare hospitalization records at almost 5,000 hospitals from 2003 to 2005.

During the three-year period, a total of 1.16 million patient safety incidents among Medicare patients occurred, an incidence rate of 2.86%. The study found 247,662 potentially preventable deaths in U.S. hospitals. The study also found that the top-rated centers had 40% lower rates of medical errors than the poorest-performing hospitals, and that if all hospitals had performed at the same level as the top-rated hospitals, about 206,286 patient safety incidents and 34,393 Medicare patient deaths could have been avoided.

Ten of 16 types of patient-safety incidents increased over the three years of the study, by an average of almost 12%. The greatest increases were in post-operative sepsis (34.3%); post-operative respiratory failure (18.7%); and selected infections due to medical care (about 12.2%). The incidents with the highest occurrence rate were decubitus ulcer (pressure sores); failure to rescue; and post-operative respiratory failure.

"The cost of medical errors at American hospitals in both mortality and dollar terms continues to be significant, and the 'chasm in quality' between the nation's top and bottom hospitals, which HealthGrades has documented in this and other studies, remains,” said lead author Dr. Samantha Collier, HealthGrades' chief medical officer. "But the nation's best-performing hospitals are providing benchmarks for the hospital industry, exercising a vigilance that resulted in far fewer in-hospital incidents among the Medicare patients studied.”


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