A recent article in British Medical Journal looked at the occurrence of fatal medical errors in a group of US hospitals and found that if the error rates found in this group of North Carolina hospitals applied nationwide, it would make fatal medical errors the third most common cause of death in the US (falling between cancer and COPD).
On the one hand, this article did not break down the findings as to what causes of medical errors were found. It also assumes that the errors found in this group of hospitals does apply to all hospitals in the US.
On the other hand, if it even comes close to being an accurate projection that ain't good!
The possible causes of fatal medical errors are numerous. The potential for communication errors is high, given the number or parties and third parties involved: patient, doctor, family, office staff, pharmacy, insurance company, "mail-order pharmacy", etc., etc.
The introduction and requirement for electronic medical/health records (EMR/EHR) is probably not helping. Doctors, nurses and pharmacists all have different parts of it and they sometimes don't overlap. Remember the first US Ebola patient who showed up in an ER in Texas? The patient was asked about recent foreign travel, he truthfully answered yes, the nurse responsibly checked the box "Yes" on the question of recent foreign travel but it did not appear in the doctor's information at all. This break up of information flow is intended to keep people with different tasks from being overwhelmed with information not directly relevant to their tasks and is a common feature of most EHR's.
The design of EHR is quite poor. Some studies show doctors spending 44% of their time on data entry and 28% of their time on actually care of the patients. Frankly, it makes me glad I never fully bought into EHR!
I hope this article prompts us all to take a real hard look at our present methods or error reduction and find ways to quickly and effectively improve on them.
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