Hospitals Did Not Capture Half Of Patient Harm Events Among Medicare Beneficiaries

Hospitals failed to identify and report half of events that harmed hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries, according to an analysis by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

For this analysis, the OIG traced harm events it identified in a 2022 report with the goals of examining whether events were captured and what happened in response. Hospitals did not capture half of the harm events that occurred among hospitalized Medicare patients, according to the findings, with staff not considering many missed events to be harm (46%) or reporting that it was not standard . . .