Hospital patient safety improves

CUMBERLAND Marylands hospitals reported for fiscal 2013 a decrease in the number of unexpected events in treatment that resulted in serious injury or death.

Since 2004, state law has mandated such reports. That same law requires only aggregate public disclosure of the incidents, thus shielding the states 63 hospitals from quantifying or describing the events that took place in their respective facilities.

The Maryland Hospital Patient Safety Program Annual Report is a product of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, specifically that agencys Office of Health Care Quality.

The 223 events were down from 286 reported during the previous fiscal year. There are 12 hospitals with more than 300 beds and they reported an average of four such events for each facility.

The Western Maryland Regional Medical Center has a bed capacity of 275. Hospitals with 201 to 300 beds reported an average of 5.5 adverse events apiece. There are 18 hospitals of this size in the state.

The 13 hospitals of 101 to 200 beds reported an average of 3.9 and facilities with fewer than 100 beds (20) had a 0.9 average. Garrett County Memorial Hospital has 62 beds.

Falls and the occurrence of pressure ulcers accounted for 125 of the 223 unexpected adverse events, but each decreased from fiscal 2012.

For some events, like falls, the number of events per year is large, but the fatality rate over the past eight years is low, the report stated. Many other event types have consistent fatality rates, but occur less often. For instance, in FY12 and FY13, anticoagulant events had 100 percent mortality, but only one event was reported each year.

Six of the 73 falls were fatal with death being caused by head injuries.

Increases were noted in death or disability from delays in treatment and airway management.

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Hospital patient safety improves