Published in today's issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers examined hospitals in Utah and Missouri and concluded that progress to shore up patient safety has been slow.
A coalition of professional health organizations from Utah and Missouri received a grant for the study from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The study follows a 1999 Institute of Medicine report that said medical mistakes kill up to 100,000 Americans a year. The institute called for major changes in the quality of hospitals.
While some patient safety improvements have been made, lead author Daniel Longo of the University of Missouri-Columbia and editorial co-author Stephen Pauker at Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston said much more needs to be done.
Specific findings about Utah hospitals' progress are not available, because researchers combined the responses from hospitals in both states.
"Based on our findings, we recommend that individual hospitals . . . review the list of patient safety systems our expert focus groups identified as needed in all hospitals," they wrote.
The study involved two surveys of all acute care hospitals in Missouri and Utah during 2002 and 2004. Researchers used a 91-item questionnaire, and analyzed the responses of 107 hospitals that responded to both.
The hospitals were asked about their policies in seven areas, including whether they had computerized physician prescriptions and test results. One of the most important findings was that while many hospitals had medication safety systems, only 3 percent required physicians to order prescriptions on the computer to avoid dispensing the wrong drugs.
Despite the fairly unimpressive findings, Longo said Utah has a stellar reputation for patient safety measures, especially in computerization of medical records. He could not say whether lumping the two states together made Utah's hospitals appear less successful in addressing patient safety.
"The point of this study is not to differentiate hospitals in Utah from hospitals in Missouri," he said. "They are reflective of hospitals nationally. Utah hospitals should be congratulated, but there's always room for improvement."
Jess Gomez, spokesman for LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City, said the medical center is dedicated to providing the highest quality of care to its patients.
"Our medical computing system is known worldwide for our ability to identify and decrease adverse drug events in patients," he said.
Christopher Nelson, spokesman for University Health Care, said University Hospital also is in the process of implementing the safety measures evaluated in the study.
chamilton@sltrib.com
