Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Law, Technology And Patient Safety, Kathryn Zeiler, Gregory Hardy

Faculty Scholarship

Medical error is the third leading cause of death in the United States, In an effort to increase patient safety, various regulatory agencies require reporting of adverse events, but reported counts tend to be inaccurate. In 2005, in an effort to reduce adverse event rates, Congress proposed a list of “never events,” adverse events, such as wrong-site surgery, that should never occur in hospitals, and authorized CMS to refuse payment for care required following such events. CMS has since pushed for further regulation, “such as putting more payment at risk, increasing transparency, increasing frequency of quality data reviews, and stepping …