State error legislation gets mixed reviews

New state laws aim to decrease medical errors and to increase patient safety.

By Damon Adams, AMNews staff. July 30, 2001.

In Minnesota, hospitals next month will begin sharing information about medical errors to learn from their mistakes. They will report errors to a Web-based registry to be accessed by health care professionals.

Indiana legislators this year created a commission to study issues related to quality of health care and to recommend a framework for an error-reporting initiative. Maryland passed a law calling for the state's Health Care Commission to examine ways to develop a system to reduce mistakes.

These are among the six states that this year adopted laws in hopes of reducing medical errors and improving patient safety. Patient advocates and state medical societies say the new laws should do just that, but they caution that more legislation is needed.

"A response to the [Institute of Medicine] report is important. Really everything is just getting started," said T. Michael Preston, executive director of MedChi, the Maryland State Medical Society.

The 1999 IOM report found that medical errors kill up to 98,000 people in hospitals each year and called on states to set up reporting systems, starting with hospitals.

Last year, 15 states introduced 45 bills related to medical errors, said the National Academy for State Health Policy. Eight of those bills became law, including a New York measure that created a patient safety center designed to reduce errors.

Fifteen states now have mandatory reporting of errors at hospitals, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Another five states and the District of Columbia have voluntary reporting systems. [...]