May 13, 2022
Providers
  • The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released a report revealing that 25 percent of Medicare patients treated in acute care hospitals in 2018 experienced patient harm, 43 percent of which was likely preventable. Of those who experienced harm, half were temporary harm events and half were adverse events. Patient harm events were most often (43 percent) tied to medications, followed by patient care (23 percent), procedures and surgeries (22 percent), and infections (11 percent). The OIG wrote that the “scale and persistence” of these events over that decade requires HHS to “work with urgency” to cut down patient harm. (Report here)