You have a right to know about the details of your situation when you are in the hospital. Who is giving your care? What is the workload for each provider? And what kind of record does the hospital have when it comes to patient harm? The Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services conducted a report released in January, 2012 that is eye-opening in its honesty regarding actual number of patient harm incidences that actually occur but are not reported. Here’s just one finding of the report:
The administrators acknowledged that incident reporting systems provide incomplete information about how often events occur, but they continue to rely on the systems primarily because they value staff accounts of events.
Help reduce incidences of patient harm and sign the petition for a Safe Patient Standard.
