Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

It's almost mandatory that any presentation or report discussing patient safety references the landmark IOM report of 2000: To Err is Human - Building a Safer Health System. The takeaway quote from this report is that US hospitals were causing 44,000 to 98,000 deaths that were otherwise preventable. That is, hospitals were causing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.

A recent paper has attempted to revise that estimate, focusing on Preventable Adverse Events (PAEs) that contributed to the death of patients. Can you guess how lethal US hospitals are now?

1. 4,000 to 10,000 PAEs per year
2. 44,000 to 98,0000 PAEs per year
3. 100,000 to 200,000 PAEs per year
4. 210,000 to 440,000 PAEs per year

The answer, after the jump...

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

Recently, the Journal of Veterinary Diagnostic Investigation had an interesting paper on error rates:

An error management system in a veterinary clinical laboratory, Emma Hooijberg, Ernst Leidinger, Kathleen P Freeman, J Vet Diag Invest 2012 24(3): 458-468.

If we look at error rates in a vet lab, do you think they're better or worse than the "normal" clinical laboratory? The results may surprise you...

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

A lot of interesting studies coming out this month, unfortunately none of them with encouraging news about the US healthcare system.

The latest, from Sunil Eappen, MD, Atul Gawande, MD et al, Relationship Between Occurence of Surgical Complications and Hospital Finances, JAMA, April 17, 2013, Vol. 309, No. 15 1599-1606

Take a guess: do US hospitals make more money when things go wrong, or less?

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

Can you guess which of these categories is the leading source of successful malpractice claims?

• Surgical mishaps
• Obstetrical problems
• Medication errors
• Anesthesia disasters
• Diagnostic errors
• Treatment errors
• Something else entirely?

The answer, after the jump...

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

More evidence of pre-analytical error rates, this time for the Journal of Clinical Pathology. This is from a study back in 2010, my apologies for only finding it this year:

A Six Sigma approach to the rate and clinical effect of registration error in a laboratory, Naadira Vanker, Johan van Wyk, Annalise E. Zemlin, Rajiv T Erasmus, J Clin Pathol 2010:63:434-437.

In this study, they reviewed 47,543 test request forms from a 3 month period of November 2008 to February 2009. The study was conducted at the "chemical pathology laboratory at Tygerberg Hospital - an academic tertiary hospital in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. The laboratory is a division of the National Health Laboratory Services, which is a network of 265 pathology laboratories in South Africa."

Can you guess how many errors they found? And what was the impact of those errors?

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

In the December 2011 issue of Point of Care journal, an interesting study was published:

Preanalytical Errors in Point-of-Care Testing: Auditing Error of Patient Identification in the Use of Blood Gas Analyzers, Natalie A Smith, David G Housley, Danielle B. Freedman, Point of Care, Volume 10: Number 4, December 2011.

The study looked at patient identification errors on a blood gas analyzer in various departments in a hospital. Bearing in mind that this is just one type of pre-analytical error, what do you think the rate was? Given around 100,000 tests, what would you guess as the number of defects?

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

[Hat-tip to the AACC Point-of-Care listserve, which first posted a notice about this article]

The Pennsylvania Patient Safety Advisory has a regular electronic newsletter highlighting new science and studies about healthcare safety. Their December 2011 issue has a particularly interesting article for laboratory testing:

Point-of-Care Technology: Glucose Meter's Role in Patient Care, Lea Anne Gardner, PhD, RN, Senior Patient Safety Analyst, Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority.

This review examined more than 1,300 reports of glucose-meter problems from the Pennsyvlania reporting system database from 2004 to 2011. Of those reports, 71 near-miss or adverse event reports occurred. Most intriguing are the report excerpts directly quoted in the study. Of those reports, 72% of the near-miss or adverse events occurred with high-blood glucose results. That is, where the glucose meter had a sudden high value that may or may not have been reflective of the actual patient's clinical state. For example:

"A patient's blood sugar was checked using a [glucose meter]. The lunchtime result was 517. A [blood glucose test] was [immediately] retaken to check for accuracy, and the result was greater than 600. A blood [laboratory] test was conducted per protocol, and the [lab] glucose [result] was 136..."

What do you think happened next?

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

Here's an eye-opening report from the Office of Inspector General from the Department of Health and Human Services: Adverse Events in Hospitals: National Incidence Among Medicare Beneficiaries

So what's your best guess on the frequency of adverse events?

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

Why do some numbers and statistics in the laboratory attract more attention than others?

While we consider ourselves scientists who make decisions based on rational cost-benefit analyses, an objective look at some of our priorities often reveals the opposite. Labs often make decisions and set priorities based on the emotions of the moment, rather than a cold analysis of the data.

Let's put it another way. There is an infamous quotation attributed to Stalin: "When one man dies it is a tragedy, when thousands die it's statistics."

Do labs respond more to individual tragedies or their own statistics?

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

 One more shot at error rates! At the IFCC Berlin conference, there was an intriguing abstract about the use of Quality Design/Planning tools in the laboratory:

Abstract #1062: Efficiency of Analytical Qualit yControl with Various Quality Planning Tools in Thai Clinical Laboratory. K. Sirisali, S. Manochiopinj, S. Sirisali.

How high do you think out-of-control rates can go?

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

Earlier we discussed error rate issues at the Point-of-Care. But we didn't want to leave the "regular" laboratory out of the fun, so here's a study of error rates that came out in 2010:

Evaluation of errors in a clinical laboratory: a one-year experience, Goswami B, Singh B, Chawla R, Mallika V, CCLM 2010;48(1):63-66.

A new study in Clinical Chemistry investigated the errors rates for Point-of-Care (POC) devices:

Quality Error Rates in Point-of-Care Testing, O'Kane MJ, McManus P, McGowan N, Lynch PL, Clin Chem 2011 Sep;57(9):1267-1.

Can you guess what the error rates were?

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

Fresh on the heels of a study about error rates in a Romanian hospital, now we've got a new study about pre-analytical error rates at a Chinese hospital:

Corrected reports in laboratory medicine in a Chinese University hospital for 3 years, Liu X, Jiang Y, Zeng R, Zaho H, Clin Chem Lab Med 2014;52(4):e57-e59

Want to guess how many errors this lab experienced out of 1.1 million test reports in 2012?

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

We've all heard the infamous quote now over a decade and a half old: that US hospitals kill between roughly 40,000 and 90,000 patients each year. This was an estimate courtesy of the Institute of Medicine report "To Err Is Human" which made the dire performance of hospitals knowledge that even the general public could understand.

But more recently, studies have been tracking the adverse event rates much more closely. A recent NEJM paper followed four conditions from 2005 to 2011.

Of these four conditions, which do you think has the best Sigma performance when it comes to the occurrence of adverse events?

A. Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI)

B. Congestive Heart Failure

C. Pneumonia

D. (other) Conditions Requiring Surgery

The answer, after the jump...

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

The third year of Medicare penalties has been meted out. This year hospitals were penalized for avoidable complications such as various types of infections, blood clots, bed sores, falls, and new to the list this year, the prevalence of two types of bacteria resistant to drugs.

Do you want to guess the percentage of injuries that impacted patients in US healthcare?

• 15%
• 11.5%
• 1.15%
• 0.115%

The answer, after the jump...

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

The IATA (International Air Transport Association), whose 260 member airlines comprise 83% of global air travel, released their statistics on 2015 airline safety.

Can you guess how safe it is to travel? What was the global jet accident rate?

• 0.32 per million flights
• 0.22 per million flights
• 0.12 per million flights
• 0 per million flights

The answer, after the jump...

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

Can you guess just how bad US healthcare is at making the right diagnosis?

Is the error rate in the US related to diagnosis

• 5%?
• 10%?
• 6 to 17%?
• all of the above?

The answer, after the jump...