A couple of months ago, we posted a blog about surgical errors, specifically when the operating teams leave tools inside the patient. That’s an example of what’s known in the medical biz as a “never event.” That means it’s a mistake, a malpractice event, for which there is never any excuse and that should never happen.
Researchers from John Hopkins University School of Medicine published a story this month in the journal Surgery that disclosed that never events occur with shocking regularity. Leaving tools inside a wound, operating on the wrong body part or even the wrong body happen about 500 times a year. The researchers estimated that 80,000 never events occurred in U.S. hospitals between 1990 and 2010.
They said their estimates probably are on the low side.
The study said that malpractice claims were paid for 9,744 never events; payments totaled $1.3 billion. More than 6 in 100 never-event patients died, more than 32 in 100 suffered permanent injury and nearly 60 in 100 were temporarily injured.
According to the Washington Post, about half of those cases involved objects left inside the patient (usually sponges, as our story earlier this year noted). The other half were cases of the wrong body part being operated on, and 17 were people who weren’t supposed to have that surgery at all.
And those were only the cases for which claims were paid; if a patient didn’t experience or didn’t report harm, they weren’t represented in the study.
The Post said the study indicates which doctors are more likely to be involved with a never event-those who had been the defendant in prior malpractice claims. The data also showed that younger doctors were more likely to settle malpractice claims for never events.
Our friends at Pop Tort, the unfiltered civil justice blog sponsored by the Center for Justice & Democracy, remind us that only a tiny percentage of people injured by malpractice in this country file lawsuits, and the Johns Hopkins study assumed that 12 in 100 errors result in indemnity payments. Some people say only 3 in 100 such patients file claims. (Pop Tort refers readers to the Center’s resource, “Briefing Book, Medical Malpractice: By the Numbers.”)
As Pop Tort points out, the $1.3 billion paid out doesn’t include the additional health-care costs for the affected patients, most whom never file suit.
Although fining hospitals more severely for never events is a popular notion, Pop Tort proffers its own solution: “What if hospitals and medical societies stopped spending millions of dollars a year lobbying to limit the recovery to malpractice victims [see our post about malpractice “reform,”] and devoted that money instead to patient care? And how about a law that would double every jury award when a ‘never event’ caused the injury–a meaningful penalty where the money goes to the person actually injured (instead of a fine, where the money goes who knows where?) And stop demonizing injured patients and their attorneys. That would be a start.”
We applaud that approach, but more immediate solutions to the problem of never events, as the Washington Post noted, involve better hospital leadership and communication. “Hospitals that have implemented checklists have seen success in increasing communication between health-care providers. Others have reviewed their policies to see where patients might be slipping between the cracks, and made improvements that way.”
As the researchers wrote in Surgery, “We trail behind other high-risk industries that have used systematic approaches to successfully identify and reduce sentinel errors. Strategies used in other complex systems such as aviation may help provide a blueprint to examine both the individual and the institutional factors that contribute to these preventable and costly events.”