Hospital Errors in Minnesota on the Rise

For the second straight year Minnesota hospitals reported medical errors resulting in death rose from the previous year. Overall the death toll from medical negligence showed a 50% increase in the number of “adverse events” reported by hospitals and centers for surgery between October 2005 and October 2006 citing to the Annual Minnesota State Report.

The program Minnesota has in place a procedure wherein the medical provider is required to report twenty-seven types of incidents known as “never events”, because they are never supposed to happen. In the nation, Minnesota is the only state that publicly discloses the medical errors with a summary of the occurrences at each hospital.

Most medical errors fall into the category of objects left behind in the patients body following surgery, mostly sponges and needles. In three cases, the wrong patient received a medical procedure that was designed for another patient. As a result of the reported errors, the University of Minnesota Medical Center now requires the surgeons to sign their initials directly on the body part where they plan to operate and before the surgery, nurses list every clean sponge and needle on a white board on the wall to help insure they leave nothing in the patient.

The Health Commissioner for Minnesota, Dianne Mandernach, could not explain the increase in deaths wherein 154 incidents were reported statewide in 2006, up from 106 incidents discovered the year before.

In most instances, if the patient was not harmed, patients usually wanted only an apology and assurance the mistake would not happen to the next person.