Indiana About to Make Medical Error Reporting Compulsory
Following executive order 05-10 (pdf format) signed by Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. Governor of Indiana and now turned into law, hospitals in the state will have to implement a medical error reporting and quality system (MERS) starting on January 1st, 2006. The directive mentioned among other reasons reports estimating the number of deaths is US hospitals each year between 44,000 and 98,000 people. The data collected on 27 mistakes that hospitals must report within 15 days of finding out about them will be made public at least once a year.
Indiana is the second state after Minnesota (which published its first annual public report in January 2005) to not only collect this information but disclose it publicly by identifying where the mistakes were made. Indiana’s first public report will be available in 2007.
December 18, 2005 Related topics: Quality, Safety, Errors