Home

  • Home
    • » e-Newsletters

Hospitals not reporting errors in PA, NJ

Quality Improvement Monitor, September 19, 2008

Some hospitals in Pennsylvania and New Jersey are flouting state laws that require them to report medical mistakes to their respective states, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The paper found egregious errors at three Pennsylvania hospitals went unreported, including:

  • One hospital had to perform additional surgeries on two patients after objects were mistakenly left inside their bodies.
  • A second hospital left an elderly woman recovering from a broken hip on a bedpan for more than four hours. The patient developed two open pressure ulcers
  • A third hospital had to send three patients back to the operating room to stop excessive postoperative bleeding

    Five of the 80 hospitals in New Jersey failed to report a single error last year, the paper said. In Pennsylvania, where reporting of near-misses is mandatory, some hospitals didn’t report a single close call.

    "I don't know how many is enough, but zero is a bad number," James Bagian, MD, head of the Department of Veterans Affairs' National Center for Patient Safety, told the Inquirer. “Anybody that is supposed to report close calls and has zero reports is clueless. Management is asleep at the switch and just waiting until they kill someone."

    For more information, click here.

    • Most Popular