“Transparency in health care can be a powerful tool for ensuring patient safety. But, it is too often not taken into account when considering patient safety measures. As a result, serious mistakes may happen in hospital or at the doctor’s office, and no one can learn from them. Or, a medical device, such as an artificial joint may have a design defect, and few people will know not to use it.
“Medicare collects and reports some important patient safety information, including how hospitals rank on two types of avoidable infections and eight different types of avoidable complications such as bed sores and blood clots. It’s worth looking at this information to see how your local hospitals rank. And, Consumer Reports also offers some patient safety data. That said, there’s a lot of critical information that’s not available to the public.”
