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news.The HealthGrades's Patient Safety in American Hospitals study has revealed that patient safety incidents during 2004 to 2006 have resulted in the deaths of nearly 250,000 people apart from draining $8.8 billion from the US federal Medicare program, according to PharmaTimes.
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The study also discovered that overall 3% of all admitted under Medicare during 2004-06 period were injured — largely as a result of medical mistakes, including prescribing errors. The study also found that patients treated in hospitals ranked in the top 5% in safety terms (the top 250 out of 5,000 hospitals) had, on average, a 43% lower chance of experiencing one or more medical errors compared to those in the worst-performing hospitals.
According to Dr Samantha Collier, HealthGrades’s chief medical officer and the lead author of the study, the continuing discrepancy between the best and worst performing hospitals also contributed to the high Medicaid costs and death toll among patients. With the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services planning to stop reimbursements to hospitals for the treatment of eight major preventable errors from October, 2008, Dr Collier also predicted a further rise in the healthcare costs.
Dr Samantha Collier said: “The prevalence of likely preventable patient safety incidents is taking a costly toll on our health care systems in both lives and dollars.”