Under the Medicare program, hospitals are required to track medical errors, and report adverse patient events. However, a new study finds that only one out of every 7 errors that occur in a hospital are recognized and reported.

According to the study by the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, most medical errors are probably going unreported. The study found that while almost all hospitals have some type of system in place for employees to track medical errors, and inform hospital managers of serious errors, hospital staff members too often fail to report serious errors that harm Medicare patients.

In fact, according to the report, many of these errors resulted in adverse events that were so serious that the person ultimately died. These adverse events that were not reported included medication errors, bed sores, excessive bleeding from improper use of blood thinners and excessive overdose of painkillers, leading to delirium. According to the inspector general's report, more than 130,000 Medicare patients were exposed to one or more adverse events in a hospital in a single month.

None of this is very surprising to Arizona medical malpractice lawyers. Since the Institute of Medicine issued its path-breaking patient safety report To Err is Human in 1999, hospitals have found it hard to encourage employees to come forward to report errors. Initially, the problem seemed to be an unwillingness to admit mistakes because of the fear of repercussions. That seems to no longer be the case. Now, the failure to report errors seems to stem from the inability to recognize what constitutes errors serious enough to cause patient harm. In other words, staff members don't seem to be able to recognize the kind of errors that can seriously lead to patient harm and the need to report these errors.