Groups target medical mistakes to save lives

By Kim Dixon

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A group of health care leaders said on Tuesday they were banding together to make U.S. hospitals less dangerous places to get well.

The campaign by the nonprofit Institute For Healthcare Improvement, with the support of the American Hospital Association trade group and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, seeks to recruit hospitals to prevent 5 million medical mistakes over two years.

The institute estimates about 15 million medical mistakes occur in hospitals each year.

Between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans die annually from preventable medical errors, according to a landmark report by the U.S. Institute of Medicine, which advises the federal government on health matters. More people die in U.S. hospitals from medical errors than perish from motor vehicle accidents or breast cancer.

"No one in health care can feel comfortable with the magnitude of infections, adverse drug events and other complications that hospital patients endure," said Donald Berwick, president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

To do this, the coalition wants 4,000 of the 5,000 U.S. hospitals to commit to at least one concrete improvement and report periodic quality and mortality data to the group.

Among the dozen interventions outlined include cutting medical prescription errors by focusing on transitions in hospital staff and following proven steps to prevent heart attack deaths.

The effort builds on an earlier campaign by adding six more quality measures, including encouraging hospitals to implement control systems to prevent deadly bacterial infections there.

Medication-related errors alone cost the health care system about $2 billion annually, the Institute of Medicine says.