Hospitals study: Mistakes are down

A group says that 122,300 people have been saved in the last 18 months.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Seven years ago a report said that each day medical errors were killing the equivalent of a jet plane full of people.
Today, many of those needless deaths through hospital mistakes and behind-the-curve care are being prevented, officials said Wednesday.
An unprecedented national campaign to reduce lethal errors and unnecessary deaths in U.S. hospitals has saved an estimated 122,300 lives in the last 18 months, said the leader of the health-care effort.
"I think this campaign signals no less than a new standard of health care in America," said Dr. Donald Berwick, a Harvard professor who organized the effort.
About 3,100 hospitals took part in the project, sharing mortality data and carrying out study-tested procedures that prevent infections and mistakes.
"We in health care have never seen or experienced anything like this," said Dr. Dennis O'Leary, who heads the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.
Experts say the cooperative effort was unusual for a competitive industry that traditionally avoids dealing publicly with patient-killing problems.
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Berwick announced the campaign's results Wednesday morning at a hospital conference in Atlanta. O'Leary was one of hundreds of industry officials in attendance.
Medical mistakes were the focus of a widely noted 1999 national report that estimated 44,000 to 98,000 Americans die each year from errors.
That year, Berwick -- president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit organization -- challenged health care leaders to improve care quality.
In December 2004, he stepped up the challenge by announcing a "100,000 Lives Campaign." He set a June 14, 2006, deadline to sign up at least 2,000 U.S. hospitals in the effort and implement six types of changes.
Perhaps the best known of the six changes was to deploy rapid response teams for emergency care of patients whose vital signs suddenly deteriorate.
Hospitals generally have teams that respond when patients develop sudden heart or breathing problems. That work is common in emergency departments. The measure was designed to make sure the service is available around-the-clock to other units, and to encourage lower-ranking medical staff members not to be intimidated about calling for help.
Another urged checks and rechecks of patient medications to protect against drug errors. A third focused on preventing surgical site infections by following certain guidelines, including giving patients antibiotics before their operations.
The hospitals also were asked to contribute monthly mortality data to Berwick's organization, which attempted to track the impact.
The effort was endorsed by federal health officials, health insurers, hospital industry leaders, the American Medical Association and others. About 3,100 hospitals signed up, representing about 75 percent of the nation's acute care beds.
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