New NJ hospital safety law passed this week
Sep 3rd, 2009 | By Michael L. Saile, Jr., Esq. | Category: BlogsNew Jersey is taking steps to keep its health care consumers well informed and presumably force hospitals to improve patient safety. On August 31, 2009 Governor Jon Corzine signed into law new legislation which requires hospitals to publically report patient safety performance and rates of serious medical errors.
In 2004 The Patient Safety Act was implemented in New Jersey, requiring hospitals to report medical errors to the State Department of Health and Senior Services. Under this Act, however, the state was not made to release specifics detailing the hospitals at which medical errors occurred.
The new legislation advances the cause of The Patient Safety Act in that the state will now be required to report annually on the hospitals responsible for making serious mistakes and the frequency with which the errors occur at each facility. Examples of these errors would include surgery performed on the wrong body part, accidental punctures to patients, and objects, such as medical instruments, being left inside a patient after a surgical procedure. Furthermore, hospitals are no longer permitted to charge patients or patients’ health insurance companies for serious preventable medical errors. The first New Jersey Hospital Performance Report to contain this newly available patient safety information will be released in late 2009.
Pennsylvania also has a patient safety reporting system, known as PA-PSRS, which was developed by the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority and went into effect in 2004. Healthcare facilities are required by the Authority to report “serious events”, as well as “near-misses”. Data collected by the Authority is analyzed in order to identify problematic trends and recommend effective changes in healthcare practices.
Many people believe that lawsuits only bring economic problems to society. When a jury awards a large figure against a negligent hospital, the safety of that hospital and other hospitals will be vastly improved.
