The high numbers of medical errors in hospitals that are part of the Medicare and Medicaid programs have been under scrutiny by Arizona medical malpractice lawyers since last month when a survey found that more than 15,000 patients on Medicare die in hospitals from medical errors every month. A new report finds that regional Medicare and Medicaid agencies are not doing a good enough job of reporting medical errors to accreditation agencies, and as a result, these errors are not being tracked and corrected.

According to an Office of the Inspector General report, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ regional agencies are not notifying accreditation agencies like the Joint Commission, when inspectors find adverse events in hospitals. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services report analyzed 88 complaints against accredited hospitals filed with the Joint Commission. The report focused on the most serious “immediate jeopardy complaints.” The report says that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services notified the Joint Commission in only 28 out of those 88 sample complaints.

This means that in far too many cases, inspectors find serious medical errors in hospitals, but fail to report these to national accreditation agencies. Hospitals are not notified about these errors, and may continue making the same mistakes over and over again. The hospitals are not given a chance to learn from their errors, and continue to participate in Medicare and Medicaid programs. Hospitals may not be in a position to correct errors. Patients in these hospitals may be at a risk of adverse events because of the failure of error-tracking procedures.

The Joint Commission has praised the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services report, and has said that it receives very little timely and reliable information from the regional Medicare and Medicaid agencies. Only some of the regional agencies send in information regularly.