State panel to tackle issue of medical errors

Friday, Nov. 30, 2001 | 9:07 a.m.

Members of a legislative subcommitee on medical errors will meet for the first time Wednesday to discuss whether Nevada needs a reporting system, and the chairman says he has set a "disciplined and aggressive agenda."

"The subcommittee should reach an outcome that will ensure patient safety in Nevada," said Dr. John Yacenda, subcommittee chairman. "No reporting system is valuable if all it does is collect numbers. We need to look at the errors, look at the causes and make recommendations for changes."

A 1999 report by the Institute of Medicine found between 44,000 and 98,000 people die each year as a result of medical errors. Nevada has neither a mandatory nor a voluntary database for reporting medical errors.

Yacenda, chief executive of Health Care Strategies Inc., a nonprofit consulting firm in Reno, was appointed by Sen. Ray Rawson, R-Las Vegas, to lead the study, approved during the past legislative session. Rawson chairs the Legislative Committee on Health Care.

The study must include definitions in regard to what constitutes a medical error and what threshold should be set for finding that a patient has been harmed.

The subcommittee must also make recommendations on four key issues:

Hospitals and the doctors and nurses that work in them are licensed by the state and must meet certain standards to operate. Hospitals that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding must be accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations, a private group under contract with the federal government to handle hospital inspections.

Nevertheless, JCAHCO shouldn't be relied on to ensure patient safety or catch medical errors, said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of the health research division of Public Citizen, a Washington watchdog group. JCAHCO only reviews hospitals every three years, and advance notice is given before inspections, Wolfe said.

"It's not enough to rely on outsiders to spot the problems," Wolfe said. "A system for reporting medical errors should be a function of the state."

A state system would also make it easier to track whether hospital staffing policies may play a role in medical errors, Wolfe said. In a study by a nursing union earlier this year, 66 percent of the nearly 300 Nevada nurses interviewed said the majority of the errors they report are a direct result of under-staffing.

In addition to Yacenda, other members of the subcommittee are Assemblywoman Bonnie L. Parnell, D-Carson City; Sen. Bernice Matthews, D-Sparks; Dr. Bernard Feldman, a professor at the University of Nevada School of Medicine and past member of the state Board of Health; and Nancy Whitman, director of business development for HealthInsight, a nonprofit organization with offices in Nevada and Utah.