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

Hospitals failed to identify and report half of patient harm events for hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries, according to an analysis by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The OIG defines “patient harm events” as those leading to undesirable clinical outcomes. Examples include medication errors, drug interactions, infection-related events, and the failure to provide needed care. Improvement actions hospitals took in response included training and monitoring.

The OIG findings include:

In 46% of the unrecorded events, staff did not consider an event to be patient harm, and did not report or . . .