Patients Affected by Medical Mistakes

Medical mistakes occur to nearly one in three people who are hospitalized, according to a new study. The new method of ranking hospital errors found nearly 10 times more errors than older tools estimated.

“Without doubt, we’ve seen improvements in health care over the past decade, and even pockets of excellence, but overall progress has been agonizingly slow,” said the editor-in-chief of Health Affairs, which published several studies on a special issue on patient safety, to news reports .

“Among the 795 patient records reviewed, voluntary reporting detected four problems, the Agency for Healthcare Research’s quality indicator found 35, and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s tool detected 354 events — 10 times more than AHR’s method.”

Medical errors, including everything from bedsores to objects left in the body after surgery to life-threatening staph infections, were studied in the report. The report also suggests there may be many errors that go undetected and aren’t reported.

As a North Charleston medical malpractice attorney, I’m not surprised to hear about the number of medical accidents occur to patients. If you or a loved one has been injured by a recalled product in a medical situation and think you was a victim of medical malpractice, contact a personal injury lawyer in North Charleston.