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On April 2, 2007, HealthGrades, an organization that provides ratings and profiles of hospitals, nursing homes, and physicians released its Fourth Annual Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study. HealthGrades looked at 40 million Medicare hospitalization records from almost 5,000 hospitals over the three years (2003 to 2005), and found: • There were 1.16 million
preventable patient-safety incidents.
• The excess cost associated
with patient safety incidents over the period was
$8.6 billion.
• Of the 16 patient safety
incidents studied, 10 worsened over the three-year
period by, on average, more than 11.5%, while the
remaining six improved, on average, by 8%.
• Patient safety incidents
with the highest incidents rates were decubitus ulcer,
failure to rescue, and post-operative respiratory
failure.
• The greatest increases
in patient safety incidents were in the areas of
post-operative sepsis, post-operative respiratory
failure, and selected infections due to medical care.
• Patients involved in
one or more safety incidents had a 25% chance of
dying.
• There were 247,662 potentially
preventable deaths. Also see our earlier trivia on patient safety. Discuss This ArticleHave something you'd like to say? Tell us what you think! Read and post comments for this article. Like this article? Read more! Browse our archive of 1,026 articles. Also, see our master index of all MedHunters articles! Find a JobChoose your career: MedHunters is the world's biggest healthcare job board. Our job directory has 16,758 jobs with 2,467 hospitals and other direct employers. We want you to find your next job on MedHunters. Need Help? Call us at 1-888-884-8242, email us at info@medhunters.com or sign up now. Would you like to share your story about a touching, funny, or memorable event that happened to you on the job? Do you have your own story of being a patient? Email us today at submissions@medhunters.com. |
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