All 58 of Oregon's community hospitals are now reporting medical errors to the Oregon Patient Safety Commission, valuable data for improving health care and preventing medical mistakes and hospital negligence.

While the unanimity of the compliance among hospitals is a good thing, it is a long time coming. The state's reporting initiative began in 2003. There is also room for significant improvement in the area of patient safety, with 34 patient deaths attributable to medical errors in 2010.

Gaps That Remain

Some sizable gaps remain in the medical error reporting system. Fifty percent of surgery centers are not reporting, and twenty-five percent of nursing homes are not participating.

There is also a lack of participation from pharmacies. Oregonian reporter Nick Budnick examined the issue and found "the Oregon Board of Pharmacy receives about 600 complaints a year." However, according to the Commission's report, pharmacies reported just six errors since fall 2008.

Since the program is voluntary, hospitals are able to disregard certain aspects they dislike. For instance, very few hospitals are following the Patient Safety Commission guideline that all patients harmed by a serious adverse event receive a written notification. Currently patients receive such notice in fewer than 50 percent of cases. According to the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, written notification is not always appropriate of feasible. Nine hospitals, however, have demonstrated full compliance is possible.

The Importance of Medical Error Reporting

A medical facility can only improve systems and procedures if it is aware there are problems with its present operations. A uniform system of error reporting allows the medical facilities to better understand patterns of medical errors, and importantly, how to better prevent mistakes in the future.

Source: OregonLive.com, Patient Safety: All Oregon's hospitals join error-reporting safety drive; pharmacies, surgery centers lag, 13 October 2011