Medical Errors In Americas Hospitals–Should Patients Be Told When They Occur?
Is honesty the best policy for hospitals? Should a hospital patient be told when an error causes injury? The nation’s hospitals generally answer “No” to these questions. But one hospital in Kentucky says, “Yes.” Recent newspaper articles provide a fascinating and alarming insight into the scope of medical errors in hospitals and what the hospitals do when they are discovered. Excerpts follow. The Medical College of Pennsylvania Hospital (MCP) is known for providing advanced medical care. It is also representative of modern American hospitals in another respect: In the past decade alone, records show, hundreds of MCP Hospital patients have been seriously injured, and at least 66 have died after medical mistakes. The Philadelphia hospital’s internal records cite 598 incidents reported by medical professionals to the hospital administration in the past decade. In some of those cases, patients or survivors were never told that the injuries were caused by medical errors. Amazingly, none of
