The rate of adverse health events in hospitals may be dropping across the USA

Patient safety in US hospitals has been analyzed over the past decade through the largest medical record-based study ever, with results showing a significant drop in adverse events. The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, analyzed the medical records of 244,542 patients across 3156 US hospitals over a 10-year period. Researchers utilized the Medicare Patient Safety Monitoring System, a surveillance system managed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (MD, USA). This assesses 21 in-hospital adverse events in patients with conditions such as acute myocardial infarction , heart failure, pneumonia and major surgical procedures, to...