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Editorial: Medical Mistakes

Disclose hospital errors

The New Jersey Legislature should approve a bill that would require the state to make public the number of preventable mistakes that occur each year at individual hospitals.

Patients are consumers who should have all the information they need when choosing a hospital for their care. Too much is at stake to withhold the error statistics.

The bill before the Legislature would require the state Department of Health and Senior Services to publish how often certain medical errors occur at each hospital. Currently, that information is provided to the state, but it is released to the public only in aggregate form. There are no numbers on what has happened at individual hospitals.

But why not? Since each hospital already reports its preventable medical mistakes to the state and federal government, the state should release that information to the public.

Hospitals are required to report preventable errors, or so-called "never events." These 28 things that should "never" happen include operating on the wrong patient or the wrong limb, sending a baby home with the wrong family, or giving an incorrect medication that resulted in death or serious injury.

In 2006, there were 450 such preventable medical errors in New Jersey hospitals and health facilities, resulting in 42 deaths, according to the state's Patient Safety Report. Nationally, between 48,000 and 100,000 people die every year from preventable medical mistakes, according to the Institute of Medicine.

Advocates believe providing hospital-specific data would change the medical culture in New Jersey. Lifting the veil of secrecy would force hospitals to work harder to prevent costly, and sometimes deadly, mistakes.

The bill would also bar hospitals and doctors from charging insurers or patients for treatment where mistakes were made.

The New Jersey Hospital Association, an industry trade group, contends hospitals are not always responsible for some medical mistakes. Hospitals don't normally charge for errors, the group says.

Pennsylvania also collects data on medical mistakes and serious complications resulting in near misses, death, or an "unanticipated harm." But just like New Jersey, it releases only aggregate data.

Experts say that some hospitals in both states do not fully comply with current law and that incidents are often underreported, which undermines attempts to improve patient safety.

In 2003, Minnesota became the first state to release hospital-specific errors. Now, more than two dozen states require hospitals to report certain mistakes, but only a few make those errors public.

Without such disclosure, patients do not have all the information they need in deciding where to seek treatment. There's no good reason for patients not to know how well their local hospitals are doing in keeping preventable mistakes to a minimum.

Informing the public so it can see whether hospitals are reducing preventable errors is the best way to hold hospitals accountable and to ultimately improve patient care.