Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Saturday April 22 2017, @09:06AM   Printer-friendly
from the finally-get-the-oops-totals dept.

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/04/18/524513837/secret-data-on-hospital-inspections-may-become-public-at-last

The public could soon get a look at confidential reports about errors, mishaps and mix-ups in the nation's hospitals that put patients' health and safety at risk, under a groundbreaking proposal from federal health officials. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services wants to require that private health care accreditors publicly detail problems they find during inspections of hospitals and other medical facilities, as well as the steps being taken to fix them. Nearly nine in 10 hospitals are directly overseen by those accreditors, not the government.

There's increasing concern among regulators that private accreditors aren't picking up on serious problems at health facilities. Every year, CMS takes a sample of hospitals and other health care facilities accredited by private organizations and does its own inspections to validate the work of the groups. In a 2016 report, CMS noted that its review found that accrediting organizations often missed serious deficiencies found soon after by state inspectors.

[...] The move follows steps CMS took several years ago to post government inspection reports online for nursing homes and some hospitals. ProPublica has created a tool, Nursing Home Inspect, to allow people to more easily search through the nursing home deficiency reports; the Association of Health Care Journalists has done the same for hospital violations.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday April 22 2017, @03:13PM

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Saturday April 22 2017, @03:13PM (#497936) Journal

    Just found this analysis [sciencebasedmedicine.org] of the meta-study. The author makes it clear that he's expressing his own opinion, but it contains liberal quotes and information about the various studies on medical error. He stops short of giving his own estimate, but it sounds like he's guessing it's likely an order of magnitude lower than many of these popular estimates. (Another response article [theguardian.com] in the BMJ gave a similar estimate of about 10%.)

    But, as he says repeatedly, even if the number of deaths caused by medical error is "only" 20,000-25,000/year, that's way too much.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2