Health Grades' Report Cites 238,000+ Preventable Deaths, $8+ Billion In Preventable Costs

In their fifth annual Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study, Health Grades Inc., cites that errors in treatment resulted in 238,337 potentially preventable deaths of Medicare patients in the US, costing $8.8 billion.

HealthGrades Inc. analyzed over 41 million patient records for the study and found that approximately 3 percent of all Medicare patients suffered from some medical error-- which equates to about 1.1 million Patient Safety Incidents (PSIs) from 2004-2006. In the report, Health Grades describes medical errors as “the failure of a planned action to be completed as intended or the use of a wrong plan to achieve an aim…[including] problems in practice, products, procedures, and systems."

There were 270,491 actual in hospital deaths that occurred among patients who developed one or more of 16 PSIs and the report states, "Using previous research, we calculated that 238,337 were attributable to patient safety incidents and potentially preventable."

In a prepared statement, HealthGrades' chief medical officer and primary author of the study, Dr. Samantha Collier, said "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", she continues, "HealthGrades has documented in numerous studies the significant and largely unchanging gap between top-performing and poor-performing hospitals. It is imperative that hospitals recognize the benchmarks set by the Distinguished Hospitals for Patient Safety are achievable and associated with higher safety and markedly lower cost."

Starting October 1st, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will stop reimbursing hospitals for the treatment of eight major preventable errors, including objects left in the body after surgery and certain kinds of post-surgical infections. As we covered recently, many insurance agencies have already stopped reimbursing for such errors.

Full report by Health Grades is located here (PDF).