Hospitals Required to Report Errors
C H I C A G O, June 28 -- U.S. hospitals will be required to tell patientswhen they've been subjected to medical errors under new patientsafety standards that take effect Sunday.
The new rule is the first of its kind from the Joint Commissionon Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, the nonprofit qualityevaluator of nearly 5,000 hospitals nationwide.
The commission acted partly in response to a 1999 Institute ofMedicine Report estimating that medical errors kill 44,000 to98,000 hospital patients annually.
Under the new guidelines, hospitals that don't discuss harmfulmistakes with patients and prove to commission investigators thatthey're doing so will risk losing their accreditation.
"We need to create a culture of safety in hospitals and otherhealth care organizations, in which errors are openly discussed andstudied so that solutions can be found and put in place," said Dr.Dennis O'Leary, president of the Oakbrook Terrace-based commission.
"We've got a lot of people I think to persuade that it is OK todo this," O'Leary said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
Some hospitals, including the nation's Veterans Affairsfacilities, already tell patients when errors occur. Others maykeep quiet to avoid potential lawsuits, said Dr. Sidney Wolfe,co-founder of Public Citizen Health Research Group, aconsumer-oriented advocacy group. But he noted that recent researchshowed hospitals that were up front with patients aboutmistakes faced fewer lawsuits.
"People don't like to get jerked around," Wolfe said. "Partof the understandable anger that accompanies a lawsuit is the ideathat something bad happened to me and they didn't tell me."
Saying 'I'm Sorry'
Rick Hendrick, a Chicago contractor who was given the wrongmedicine in a hospital emergency room, agrees.
Hendrick, 47, said he would have felt a lot better about hisordeal "if they'd come to me and said, 'This is what happened. I'msorry, we made a terrible mistake'" and had warned him of the sideeffects.