patient safety

This report and roadmap provide health systems with direction for eliminating preventable medical harm.

In 2011, some widely used implantable heart defibrillators, designed to correct potentially fatal irregular heart rhythms, developed cracked insulation on their high-voltage electrical wires. The result was that in some cases they caused severe shocks, and even deaths.

By Sandra G. Boodman

By Roni Caryn Rabin

By Jordan Rau, Senior Correspondent, Kaiser Health News

Here's a scary statistic: A surgeon in the U.S. leaves a foreign object, such as a sponge or towel, inside a patient's body after an operation 39 times a week.

You would think that patients in a hospital's intensive care unit would be the least likely to worsen or die simply because someone misdiagnosed their condition.