Last November, the Institute of Medicine issued a report concluding that medical errors kill 44,000 to 98,000 patients in U.S. hospitals each year. It recommended that all hospital errors causing death or injury be reported to the federal government. In February, President Clinton urged Congress to establish a Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety within the Department of Health and Human Services. The center would require reporting of medical mistakes with the goal of cutting medical errors in half within five years. But the AMA has concerns about mandatory error reporting, which already is required in some states.
Members say fear of consequences prevents many doctors and nurses from reporting mistakes.
In order to work, the AMA maintains, any reporting system must address the causes of the errors and find ways to prevent them from happening again. The issue may not even be reporting. The issue needs to be what do we have to change so that the system makes fewer errors. Another problem with a mandatory system, the AMA maintains, is the nature of most medical errors. Mistakes, they say, are usually systemic errors, not the fault of a single person.