Ohio children's hospitals preventing medical errors

Children’s hospitals throughout Ohio have committed to eliminating medical errors by next year, according to U.S. News writer Steve Sternberg.

Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus reportedly created a list of preventable mistakes such as falls, adverse drug events, bedsores, and surgical errors and asked staff members to report them.

“We can’t fix things that we don’t know are happening,” Chief Medical Officer Richard Brilli told Sternberg.

When an error occurs, the 120-year-old hospital takes steps to prevent it from happening again.

“Anyone found to have taken a shortcut could be reprimanded,” Sternberg reported.

In three years, the hospital has reduced the number of preventable medical errors by 50 percent.

To promote that progress, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services granted $5 million to a group of Ohio children’s hospitals to do the same.

Dr. Steve Muething, vice president of safety at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, said in response to a blog about medical errors that over 30 hospitals have joined the Partnership for Parents which aims to reduce medical errors by 40 percent by the end of next year.

“For the first time, these organizations are sharing data on harm with each other, sharing best practices, and learning real-time from those that seem to be doing better,” he wrote. “We have a long ways to go, but our CEOs have committed to this shared goal and the transparency that is allowing us to accelerate the learning.”