Fewer deaths from medical errors

The number of people who died from medical errors in Dutch hospitals has dropped by almost half, the Netherlands institute for health services research NIVEL has said in a report that came out on Monday.

The report says that whereas in 2008, 1960 people died because physicians erred, that number went to 970 between April 2011 and March 2012.

NIVEL attributes the drop to better safety arrangements and better care to prevent mistakes. “In particular, the hospitals took better care to prevent infections and had better control in place for when patients were given dangerous medications,” the report said.

Researcher Cordula Wagner said that even more improvements are possible if hospitals continue this trend. NIVEL said though that it should be understood that it will never be possible to reduce the number of patients that suffers due to mistakes in the hospitals to zero.