Congress once again debates legislation on patient safety

Doctors and others would be able to report mistakes without the information being used against them in court.

By Joel B. Finkelstein, AMNews staff. March 28, 2005.

Washington -- The Senate is taking the early lead on legislation that would create a national, voluntary medical error reporting system, but it is unclear whether the House will follow.

Patient safety measures passed both bodies last year, but the bills were never consolidated to iron out subtle but distinct differences over safeguards to ensure that information would not be used in litigation against physicians and other health professionals. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee recently approved a measure similar to last year's Senate bill.

"This legislation strikes the proper balance between confidentiality and the need to ensure accountability throughout the health care system," said Donald J. Palmisano, MD, immediate past president of the American Medical Association.

Federal action is needed to develop a national database so that error trends can be spotted and mistakes can be prevented, said William Golden, MD, professor at the College of Medicine at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock.

"In order for this to move forward, we need some infrastructure support on the national level," he said. Many of the state and private efforts have suffered from inconsistent funding, he added.

Progress on reducing errors has been too slow five years out from publication of the Institute of Medicine's report, "To Err Is Human," which blamed about 100,000 deaths a year on medical errors, said Margaret VanAmringe, vice president of public policy and government relations at the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. "This is important business we're talking about, and we haven't done enough," she said. "If we don't have the knowledge of what is wrong, we can't come up with the solutions. Providers want to do a good job. We need to give them the tools to do it."