With hospital safety very much in the news, HealthGrades released its annual patient safety study yesterday. The report argues that patient safety remains a serious problem at many American hospitals, finding that medical errors rose significantly between 2000 and 2004. HealthGrades ranks New Jersey, New York, Nevada and Tennessee among the worst performers on the state level. Predictably, the Midwestern states did well, with Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan and Kansas ranking near the top for patient safety.
According to the company's report, the most common patient safety incidents nationwide were decubitus ulcers (bedsores), post-operative sepsis (a bacterial bloodstream infection) and failure to rescue, "the inability to save a hospitalized patient's life when that patient has acquired a complication." While everyone admits that medical errors remain a problem, in the past HealthGrades has been accused of reporting more errors and more error-related deaths than other analysts.
- see this article from Forbes