Fierce Healthcare writes of a new report which found that “Wrong-patient” errors are not uncommon and such mistakes may have deadly consequence. Researchers from ECRI Institute, a nonprofit group focused on patient safety, examined more than 7,600 cases of wrong patient errors recorded between January 2013 and June 2015 at more than 181 facilities. They concluded that these instances, which were reported voluntarily without fear of malpractice repercussions, represent just a small portion of such errors. More than 90 percent of the mistakes were detected before patient harm occurred, according to the report, but two were fatal and others may have had similar consequences had they not been caught.
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