An analysis of government data on hospital safety by Consumer Reports describes how likely patients are to die of avoidable surgical complications.
The analysis also shows that hospitals vary markedly on these measures and that patients are at higher risk in some nationally-known facilities than at tiny hospitals little known outside their rural communities, according to the report.
If the highest number is correct, poor hospital care would be the country's third leading cause of death, after heart disease and cancer, according to Reuters.
Mike Wilde, M.D., chief medical officer at Sanford, which earned the highest safety score in the report, said hand washing and inserting and removing urinary catheters and central-line catheters, which provide drugs, fluids, and nutrition to patients, are the two most common causes of infections in hospital, the report said.
Wilde said accountability is also key so the staff now examines whether errors stem from a poorly functioning device or a failure to follow a safety protocol.
According to the 1999 report by the Institute of Medicine that first put a spotlight on the issue, the death toll from medical mistakes in hospitals was at least 98,000 then, Reuters reported. A 2013 study estimated such deaths at a minimum of 210,000 annually and as many as 440,000.
In 2011, 722,000 annual hospital-acquired infections alone killed 75,000 patients, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
The Consumer Reports hospital safety analysis comes eight months after it released ratings of the quality of surgical care at 2,463 hospitals, based on the percentage of Medicare patients who died in the hospital during or after their surgery and the percentage who stayed in the hospital longer than expected, Reuters reported.
The data all came from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, part of HHS, and were as recent as 2012-2013, for things like bloodstream infections, and as old as 2009-2011 for adverse events in surgical patients, Reuters reported. Data on deaths, readmission, and CTs were from patients 65 or older, while that on hospital-acquired infections was for patients of all ages.
