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Study finds US paediatric medical errors kill 4500 children a year

New Jersey Anne Harding

Medical errors in hospital are responsible for the deaths of nearly 4500 children in the United States every year, says a study examining the effect of lapses in patient safety on children in hospitals throughout the nation (Pediatrics 2004;113:1741-6).

"The bottom line is that none of these events should have happened," said Dr Marlene R Miller, the study’s lead author and director of quality and safety initiatives at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore.

Children less than 1 year old and those covered by Medicaid, the government’s insurance programme for poor people, were most likely to experience medical errors, Dr Miller and Dr Chunliu Zhan report (Pediatrics 2004;113:1741-6).

The study, which was funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, looked at 5.7 million hospital discharge records for people under 19 years in 27 states in 2000. On the basis of their . . . [Full text of this article]

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