Medical Errors Cost U.S. $8.8 Billion, Result in 238,337 Preventable Deaths

A study published on April 8, 2008 called HealthGrades, Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study" showed  medical errors at U.S. hospitals killed 270,491 people and cost the US $8.8 billion in the Medicare program alone. HealthGrades is a healthcare ratings organization, providing ratings and profiles of hospitals, nursing homes and physicians.

In their fifth annual study they performed an analysis of 41 million Medicare patient records, from 2004 to 2006 and found that the overall medical error rate was about 3 percent for all Medicare patients, which extrapolates  out to about 1.1 million patient safety incidents during the three years included in the analysis. 

In a release from HealthGrades, they note that Medicare patients who experienced a patient-safety incident had a one-in-five chance of dying as a result of the incident. Dr. Samantha Collier, HealthGrades' chief medical officer and the primary author of the study noted, "While many U.S. hospitals have taken extensive action to prevent medical errors, the prevalence of likely preventable patient safety incidents is taking a costly toll on our health care systems in both lives and dollars."

The release also noted that there was a large discrepancy between hospitals.  They stated that if the lower performing hospitals were performing as well as what they called the "Distinguished Hospitals for Patient Safety" that approximately 220,106 patient safety incidents and 37,214 Medicare deaths could have been prevented while approximately $2.0 billion could have been saved during the years 2004 to 2006.

Out of the nearly 5,000 hospitals HealthGrades studied, they identified only 249 hospitals that were worthy of receiving their Distinguished Hospitals for Patient Safety award. The study showed that the most reported patient safety risk is a little-known but always-fatal problem called "failure to rescue". This is when caregivers fail to notice or respond when a patient is dying of preventable complications in a hospital.  This translates into approximately 61,000 people dying each year from failure to rescue mistakes.

In an MSNBC article on the same day, Sean Clarke, associate director for the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing in Philadelphia commented, "Failure to rescue is not whether you get the wrong IV in the first place. It's how fast do people pick up that you're going south and turn it around?"