Editorial: No delays on patient safety

Thursday, May 19, 2005 | 8:58 a.m.

In November 1999 the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine published a jarring report on medical mistakes. The report concluded that between 44,000 and 98,000 hospital patients in the United States die each year because of mistakes by doctors and other health care providers. An Institute of Medicine doctor told CNN that the total death count was probably higher, as there are many mistakes that go unreported and the study was limited to hospitals, omitting doctors' offices, clinics, outpatient surgical centers, pharmacies and nursing homes.

Nearly a year after the report came out, an article in FDA Consumer magazine, published by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, assessed its impact. It described a plan by President Clinton to cut medical errors in half within five years. Part of his plan was to create a "nationwide, state-based system of reporting medical errors that would include mandatory reporting of mistakes that result in death or serious injury and voluntary reporting of ... 'close calls' or 'near misses,' " the magazine reported.

Clinton was right to set a deadline for greatly improving safety standards in hospitals and other health-care centers. The medical community, however, did not join together in a program to meet that deadline, which is this year. Improvements have been made in many hospitals, but, nationwide, there's been no decrease in the mortality statistics. The Journal of the American Medical Association released a report on Wednesday concluding that up to 98,000 people annually continue to die in hospitals because of medical errors.

The FDA article reported that the "fear of being sued suppresses discussions about medical errors." Five years has not changed that culture. The Journal report says that unreported errors remain a problem. The advantage of reporting errors is that word can spread almost instantly these days, and doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other health-care professionals can learn from the mistakes of others.

The Journal study suggests another five-year plan to address the medical-error reporting issue and other safety measures. Even if this goal is met, the statistics show that another 500,000 people, or more, will have died from medical errors in the interim. In our view, this country, with its world-leading medical resources, can do better than come up with five-year plans to save patients' lives. The federal government, hospitals and other health-care centers should mobilize as if the deadline was next month, or, better yet, next week.