Medicare patients suffer from a medical error every 1.7 minutes
Accreditation Connection, October 26, 2009
A recent evaluation of almost 5,000 hospitals across the nation found that 913,000 "patient safety events" occurred between 2005 and 2007, according to NaturalNews.com. The evaluation, conducted by HealthGrades, reviewed a Medicare database and the hospitals' performance on 12 different measures of patient safety. The patient safety events were errors that led to medical problems.
The most common errors were bed sores, postoperative respiratory failure or serious infection, and death from serious but treatable complications among surgical inpatients. Results shows that 2.3% of Medicare patients suffered from errors at these hospitals, which means, on average, such patients suffer from an error every 1.7 minutes.
Another statistic derived from the evaluation was that patients staying at an award-winning hospital were 43% less likely to be at risk of a medical error.
"The good news is that there are hospitals out there doing an amazing job when it comes to patient safety," lead researcher and orthopedic surgeon Rick May said in an official statement. "Patients need to know that they have a substantially lower risk of experiencing a medical error and therefore a lower risk of death or complication when they are admitted to one of these exceptional top-performing hospitals."
To read more on the story, click here.
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