Workers in New York hospitals might make errors because of confusion about patient identities. When the ECRI Institute analyzed 7,613 wrong-patient incidents voluntarily supplied by 181 health care organizations around the country, patient identification errors took place at all levels, including among physicians, nurses, transporters, lab technicians and pharmacists.
Workers in New York hospitals might make errors because of confusion about patient identities. When the ECRI Institute analyzed 7,613 wrong-patient incidents voluntarily supplied by 181 health care organizations around the country, patient identification errors took place at all levels, including among physicians, nurses, transporters, lab technicians and pharmacists.
The ECRI Institute and other patient safety organizations have recorded thousands of cases of misidentified patients across the health care system. A patient with the wrong name on an ID tag or medical record might mean that someone else in the system is mislabeled and errors impacting two people could occur.
An incorrect name could be placed on a patient at any point during the delivery of care such as at registration, during electronic data entry or during transport between departments or facilities. Patient safety experts recommend that friends and family of patients ask questions about care and procedures. Health care workers could reduce errors by developing a protocol that verifies the identify of each patient.
According to research from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, approximately 250,000 deaths arise from medical errors each year. Some of them, such as a mistake about a patient’s identify, could be preventable. A person who suspects that substandard hospital care led to an infection, wrong-site surgery or medication error could experience worsened health and financial hardship. A medical malpractice lawsuit might obtain compensation to pay for medical bills, suffering and lost income. Because these types of lawsuits are quite complex, having the assistance of an attorney throughout the process can be advisable.
