Barbara Boxer presents report findings at UCLA Medical Center
Senator Barbara Boxer visited the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center on Friday to see how medical personnel are addressing nine of the most common procedural errors she outlined in her medical report, which she also released on Friday. (Courtesy of UCLA Newsroom)
By Samuel Temblador
April 28, 2014 2:24 a.m.
U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., released a report on Friday identifying procedural errors in hospitals as one of the leading causes of death in America. The report included approaches hospitals should take to address this concern.
That same day, Boxer visited the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center to examine how the university’s medical personnel have taken measures to address the nine most common medical errors outlined in her report.
A public-private partnership funded by the Affordable Care Act released the list last year to unify an initial set of lists identifying various kinds of medical errors that Boxer’s staff compiled.
The list used in the final report includes surgical site infections, adverse drug reactions, patient falls and bedsores among the most common medical errors.
Boxer’s efforts to compile the report and survey California hospitals for their responses began last year, after the senator met a family that had lost a child because of medical errors committed by a hospital where the child was receiving treatment.
According to the report, between 210,000 and 440,000 Americans deaths every year are results of medical error-related causes. In an estimate from Boxer’s report, the direct costs of medical errors totaled $19.5 billion annually.
“It is not just a moral imperative to act, it is an economic necessity,” said the report.
The senator asked 283 California hospitals in February what they had been doing to reduce their medical errors. Of the hospitals Boxer contacted, 53 percent responded and said they had taken at least some measures to address the most common medical errors.
At the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, hospital staff demonstrated for Boxer some of the measures that have been implemented to help prevent medical errors, including a bar code scanning system used to dispense the correct medication to the patients. Nurses use the system by logging into a patient’s medical record to check for the medications they need and then access them from the dispenser.
The system is meant to protect patients from being exposed to the wrong kinds of medication. Boxer said in her report that this medical error affects 5 percent of hospitalized patients.
Before the installation of this system, the medical center was making two to four medical errors a month, according to a UCLA press release. Since then, no medical errors have been reported, according to the statement.
Before her tour of the medical center, Boxer cited UCLA’s use of ultraviolet light for disinfecting hospital rooms as a model strategy in her report for reducing medical errors.
“This is amazing technology that will help save lives,” Boxer said Friday, after witnessing the hospital’s ultraviolet disinfection system sterilize a room in five minutes.
Boxer said in her report that she believes publicizing the best medical practices she and her staff identified in their findings will help save lives and serve as a model to help hospitals reduce medical errors.
Compiled by Samuel Temblador, Bruin reporter.
