WASHINGTON -- Approximately 1 in 3 people will be affected by a medical error during a stay in a U.S. hospital researchers recently declared.  The finding is about 10 times higher than studies using older methodology.  Further, this study comes approximately 10 years after the Institute of Medicine report finding major gaps in health quality. 

The study was published in the April issue of the journal Health Affairs.  It involved the review of approximately 800 patient charts at 3 United States hospitals.  The “global trigger tool” review technique was used by researchers to detect 354 adverse patient events.  The tool was used by experienced reviewers not associated with the hospitals.  Moreover, the researchers noted that these findings are conservative as the error rate was based upon record review which does not identify as many errors as actual real-time observation.  Also, the study found that currently used adverse event detection methods used to track patient safety missed approximately 90% of the adverse events.

The major medical errors included:  medication administration errors, surgical errors including operations on the wrong site or errors leading to infection or bleeding, and hospital acquired infections.

Another study has estimated that the annual cost of medical errors harming patients to be in excess of $17.1 billion.  Some of the most common hospital errors found included infections following surgery and bedsores/pressure ulcers.

Further, late as last year, the Office of Inspector General for the United States Department of Health and Human Services stated that each year approximately 180,000 Medicare recipients die from hospital errors.