• 19
  • January
    2012

A report on medical errors in Minnesota hospitals shows how hospitals continue to struggle to eliminate mistakes. It also provides an example of transparency about surgical errors for Ohio and other states to consider.

The report, released on Jan. 19 by the state health department, found that hospitals reported a record 316 "never events" in 2011, an increase of 11 from the previous year. As we have discussed in this blog, a "never event" is a category of medical error considered so preventable that experts say they theoretically should never happen.

Examples of never events include operating on the wrong body part - say, putting in an artificial knee in the left leg instead of the right - and leaving a surgical sponge inside the body. Going into specifics, progress on reducing never events was mixed. For example, wrong site surgeries dropped to 24 last year from 31 in 2010, but the number of wrong procedures performed increased from 16 to 26.

The state agency learned that medical errors led to 84 patient disabilities and five deaths. While fairly high, the numbers are an improvement from Minnesota's high of 116 disabilities and deaths due to mistakes in 2008.

Minnesota is one of the few states that track medical errors hospital by hospital and publish the results. An official with a local hospital said the annual report, which was first released in 2005, forces his facility to focus harder on identifying surgical errors and work to prevent them from happening in the future.

Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune, "Wrong surgery cases hit a high," Jeremy Olson, Jan. 19, 2012