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California records 100 serious medical errors per month
By Sue Mueller
Jun 30, 2008 - 1:42:07 PM

MONDAY June 30, 2008 (foodconsumer.org) -- The state of California has recorded 1,002 cases of serious medical harm to patients who were treated in hospitals in the state during a 10-month period ending in May, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The record shows that doctors performed the wrong surgical procedure either operated on the wrong body part or on the wrong patient 41 times and left foreign objects in the patients' bodies 145 times during the period among others, according to San Jose Mercury News.

The data are maintained by the State Department of Public Health, but not readily available for the public.   Disclosures of the record on the internet are expected starting in 2015 although officials are hopeful that it may occur sooner than the law requires.

Medical errors of this sort are officially called "adverse events" or "never events" in the state, which means these medical mistakes are deemed preventable and they are not supposed to occur.

In California, new state law, which is objected by the medical circle while welcome by consumer groups, requires hospitals to report any of 28 types of dangerous mistakes to state regulators including deaths during labor, medication errors, suicide attempts and sexual assaults.

Beth Capell, a lobbyist for consumer advocacy group Health Access California, was cited as calling the number of "adverse events" "a wake-up call to everyone about the safety of California hospitals."

Doctors view the number differently.   Dr. Angela Scioscia, senior medical director of the UC San Diego Medical Center, was cited by San Jose Mercury News as saying hospitals "are becoming safer and safer all the time."

In response to the publicizing of “adverse events”, an assemblyman in Sacramento proposed a ban on reimbursing hospitals for the types of injuries tracked by the state. But the ban became narrow after lobbyists for doctors and hospitals voiced their objection to the measure, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The health department on the other hand has levied $25,000 fines against 10 hospitals that reported "never events".