BMJ  2003;327:887 (18 October), doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7420.887

News

Medical injuries in US hospitals cause more than 30 000 deaths each year

Susan Mayor

London

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Medical injuries incurred by patients while in hospital result in longer hospital stays, increased hospital charges, and more than 30 000 deaths each year, a study published this week says ( JAMA 2003;290: 1868-74[Abstract/Free Full Text]).

The study analysed patient safety indicators—measures recording incidences related to patient safety while in hospital—from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to identify medical injuries in 7.45 million hospital discharge abstracts from 994 acute hospitals across 28 states for the year 2000. This was equivalent to a 20% stratified sample of non-federal acute hospitals in the United States.

Results were assessed for the impact of medical injuries on length of hospital stay, hospital charges, and deaths attributable to medical injuries during hospitalisation, although the researchers noted that their findings were likely to represent an underestimate compared with other reporting systems for medical injuries.

Results showed that postoperative sepsis—which was recorded in 2595 patients—had the . . . [Full text of this article]


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