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Sunday Morning News

Investigation Blames Nursing Crisis for Thousands of Deaths and Injuries

Aired September 10, 2000 - 9:21 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Turning now to your health. A disturbing report blames poorly trained and overworked nurses for thousands of hospital deaths and injuries. A "Chicago Tribune" investigation found since 1995 at least 1,720 hospital patients have died because of mistakes made by registered nurses across the country. More than 9,000 others have been injured, says the report. The "Chicago Tribune" says it has, its investigation is based on an analysis of three million state and federal records. It comes on the heels of a broader report by the Institute of Medicine, which estimates medical mistakes kill at least 44,000 hospital patients a year nationwide.

Now, in response to that report, the government is sponsoring a national summit on preventing medical mistakes. It kicks off tomorrow in Washington and joining me now from that city to talk about this is Dr. John Eisenberg, who is director of the lead federal agency charged with improving health care services.

Dr. Eisenberg, thanks for being with us.

DR. JOHN EISENBERG, DIRECTOR, AGENCY OF HEALTH CARE RESEARCH AND QUALITY: Thank you, Miles.

O'BRIEN: Those are some scary numbers when you hear 44,000 patients a year potentially dying because of mistakes. I think we all expect that we're safe when we get to the hospital.

EISENBERG: We all want to be safe. We want to be sure that when we visit our hospital but also when we go to an outpatient facility, a doctor's office, that we're going to get safe care. This conference that's going to be held on Monday, this summit on research and patient safety is going to be the first time that the federal and private funders of research are going to get together to listen to what the users of the research need to know in order to reduce this problem of medical errors and to enhance patient safety.

O'BRIEN: Well, you mentioned that going to the doctor's office, for example, many more procedures are done sort of on an outpatient basis or done in doctor's offices. Is this part of the problem?

EISENBERG: We really don't know enough about what's happening in the outpatient facility. That research that has been done suggests that it's a serious problem, that a lot of the mistakes that are made in drug prescribing or diagnostic testing occur in the outpatient setting with people who have chronic diseases, not just inpatients who are going to surgery or being in the hospital.

O'BRIEN: Now, this report which is coming out of the "Chicago Tribune" this morning tends to point the finger at nurses and while anybody who's worked in a hospital knows nurses run the hospital, is it fair to single nurses out as a group?

EISENBERG: We can't single anybody out. In fact, the tradition, unfortunately, in this area of medical errors is to name people to blame people and then to shame people. What we need to do is to look at the whole system, the whole hospital, the whole health care system and find out how we can put systems together that prevent the natural errors that people are going to make from getting translated into injury to individual patients. That's the real challenge is that kind of research.

O'BRIEN: When you say systems, what are we talking about? Is this something where money needs to be thrown at the problem?

EISENBERG: You know, I think some money is going to need to be invested in this area, but the same estimate of 44,000 to 98,000 deaths in this country led us to estimate that as much as $29 billion is being spent and wasted because of problems in patient safety. So I think that we could invest in this area with more research and then translating that research into practice and in the long run we'd probably save money as well as saving lives.

O'BRIEN: How much of this fits into the whole big picture of rising costs and attempts to get a hold of those costs and the pressure that is put on medical care professionals as a result?

EISENBERG: Well, this problem has existed for some time but it's recently surfaced because of the research that has been done in this area. But certainly the pressure because of health care costs has been substantial. Hospitals are having to look at their staffing ratios. Physicians offices are having to look at the amount of time that they can spend with each patient and other pressures are causing tension in the health care system. That tension sometimes can save us money but sometimes it risks people's lives or their health.

O'BRIEN: It's a tough tradeoff.

EISENBERG: It is.

O'BRIEN: All right, Dr. John Eisenberg, who is with the agency of Health and Research Quality, thanks for being with us on CNN SUNDAY MORNING.

EISENBERG: Thank you. Thanks.

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