US hospital side effects dropped significantly
The largest-ever medical records-based study of adverse events suffered by hospitalized patients in the US, is published in the July 12 issue of JAMA , reported a significant reduction in the rate of adverse events over the past decade. The study findings are promising for patient safety and the effectiveness of hospital patient safety initiatives. In this study, the unidentified medical records of 244,542 patients in 3,156 US hospitals over 10 years were examined. The researchers used the Medicare Patient Safety Monitoring System (MPSMS), a surveillance system administered by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) designed to assess 21 in-hospital side effects in patients with the primary condition acute myocardial infarction (heart attack). heart failure, pneumonia, major surgical procedures, and all other conditions. The relative risk was adjusted for the patient’s age, gender, race, ethnicity, specific comorbidities, and the characteristics of each hospital. The i