Hospital Errors Are Actually on the Rise

It’s 2025, an age where technology and medicine seem to be on the cutting edge. That’s why it may surprise you to learn that with so many advancements and innovations, many recent studies show that hospital mishaps, and medical malpractice, are not decreasing—they’re actually very much on the rise.

Study Looks at Medical Errors

The study looked at 1,000 admitted into hospitals, although it focused only on one geographic region (Massachusetts). The study also focused on hospitals, not outpatient surgical centers, which, although they tend to handle less serious or fewer emergency procedures, also tend to have fewer facilities, staffing, and follow up post surgery, than a traditional hospital has.

Errors on the Rise

Of those patients looked at by the study, almost 40% experienced an adverse medical event while being treated or after being treated at the hospital. And of those, half were considered to be life threatening.

Not all of these adverse events were pure accidents; about 25% had adverse events that the study found as preventable, with due care.

As you may imagine, the patients who suffered the most common adverse events were those in surgery, and those who suffered these events just after surgeries. These may have included opportunistic infections, errors in prescribing medicine, and other medical errors. They did not all happen in the actual surgical suite. Things like ulcers or infections, often develop hours or days after being admitted from surgery, but while still being in the hospital.

Complications mostly arose involving any procedure with the heart and lungs.

The problem with these statistics—aside from the fact they’re frighteningly high—is that they may actually be less than the actual number of complications and errors that happen in hospitals, because we don’t exactly know how many such errors go unreported.

What Happened to Technology?

All this is in the face of advancements that you would think should lower the amount of medical errors in hospitals, and related to surgeries. Today, doctors have alerts when contradicting medicines are prescribed, or they have your medical records online always at the ready, or they use checklists that were not used in the past.

Minimizing the Risk

There is no way to completely eliminate the risk of medical errors, hospital mistakes or medical malpractice. But there are things that you can do, to minimize your risk.

Perhaps the best thing to do, is to have someone you trust, like a family member, with you at all times in the days after a surgery. This person can alert staff to discomfort, changes in your pain level, or can alert doctors to your conditions, allergies, or to changes in your condition.

If you can, and if you have the choice, find hospitals that have good reviews, and which visually appear clean and organized. The cleanliness and attentiveness of hospital staff is an indication of how attentive they will be to you, after your surgery.

Medical error or malpractice? Hospital injury? We can help. Call us for help and to schedule a consultation with the Tampa personal injury lawyers at Barbas, Nunez, Sanders, Butler & Hovsepian today for help with your accident or injury case.

Sources:

cnn.com/2024/11/15/health/surgical-complications-medical-errors/index.html

cnn.com/2023/07/19/health/diagnosis-error-study/index.html