Survey: Many Patient Harm Events Unreported

Source: Health Data Management

A survey of 189 hospitals finds they all use incident reporting systems to capture events of patient harm, but that staff members don’t report 86 percent of such events.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General conducted the survey and makes findings and recommendations in a report made public on Jan. 5. “The administrators acknowledged that incident reporting systems provide incomplete information about how often events occur, but they continue to rely on the systems primarily because they value staff accounts of events,” according to the report.

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