The Burrill Report


Nearly 14 percent of Medicare patients who are hospitalized—a troubling 1 out of 7—experience adverse events during their time in the hospital, according to a new government report. The rate projects to 134,000 patients covered by Medicare experiencing at least 1 adverse event during the period studied by the Office of the Inspector General.

An equal number of patients experienced temporary harm—incidents that required intervention but did not cause lasting harm to the patient.

Such problems carry an economic, as well as a human, toll. The report estimates adverse and temporary harm events cost Medicare an estimated $324 million in October 2008 alone, the period studied. A total of 16 percent of sampled patients who experienced events incurred additional Medicare cost as a result. The added costs were equal to 3.5 percent of Medicare’s expenditure for inpatient care during October 2008. That would represent, on an annualized basis for fiscal 2009, $4.4 billion spent on care associated with such events.

Physicians determined that 44 percent of all of the events were preventable. Preventable events were linked most commonly to medical errors, substandard care, and lack of patient monitoring and assessment, the report said.

Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, said the study shows that hospital patients are harmed much more frequently than previously estimated and points to the need for mandatory validated public reporting of medical errors.

“When mistakes are made in hospitals, the consequences can be serious and too often deadly,” said Lisa McGiffert, Director of Consumers Union’s Safe Patient project. “This report shows that hospital patients are being harmed by medical errors at an alarming rate. Unfortunately, most Americans have no way of knowing whether their hospital is doing a good job preventing medical errors.”

The Office of Inspector General makes several recommendations. These include that the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services broaden patient safety efforts to include all types of adverse events. This would include setting priorities for research, establishing guidelines for hospital reporting, and developing prevention strategies.

The report also said AHRQ and CMS should enhance efforts to identify adverse events. Also, CMS should provide additional incentives to hospitals to reduce the incidence of adverse events through its payment and oversight functions.


November 17, 2010
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-medical_errors_hurt_1_in_7_medicare_patients.html