Quality improvement relies on understanding frequency, type, and location of adverse events. Without this knowledge, how can we reduce injuries if we can’t identify when, how, or why they happen? It’s also worrying how frequently patient admissions lead to an adverse event. This makes it clear that improving detection and prevention is essential. A recent study published in the British Medical Journal revealed that some 38% of surgical admissions patients endured some sort of clinically significant event. Statistics like these demonstrate the continued need for accountability for hospital malpractice.
We represent folks who have suffered injury due to medical negligence. But often times the cases we bring can have long term downstream benefits to future patients. That is: medical negligence cases can lead to improvements in medical care. That has long been the arc of medical negligence for decades. And this recent study demonstrates that our work is far from done. And suggests that this type of research continues to be critically important going forward.
Though published in a British journal, the study used randomized samples from 11 U.S. hospitals, chosen to represent a cross-section of medical care across the entire country. These hospitals varied in size, providing a diverse view of healthcare settings. The researchers aimed to examine clinically significant events, so they defined an adverse effect as an “unintended physical injury resulting from or contributed to by medical care that required additional monitoring, treatment, or hospital admission, or that resulted in death.”
More than three-quarters of the events identified were scored as ‘potentially’ or ‘probably’ preventable. By doing some back-of-the-envelope math, we can estimate that approximately 30% of all patients admitted for surgery suffer some form of preventable, clinically significant injury. This highlights a rather incredible statistic that calls for immediate attention and action.
You can read the paper here: Safety of inpatient care in surgical settings: cohort study.
