According to Washington-based Leapfrog Group, more hospitals are adopting the Never Events policy, which describes that organizations pledge to take whenever a rare medical error — one that should never happen to a patient — including apologies, reporting and waving costs.
Though wide variation across states exists, Leapfrog says 63 percent of the 1,220 hospitals reporting to the 2008 Leapfrog Hospital Survey indicated a Never Events Policy implementation. This is up from 52 percent of reporting hospitals in 2007, the policy’s first year, Leapfrog says.
While there has been an increase nationwide in adoption of Leapfrog’s policy, there are wide variations across states that report to Leapfrog, it says. In Arizona, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, fewer than 35 percent of reporting hospitals in each state have implemented the policy. However, the group says, in Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, and Minnesota, over 90 percent of reporting hospitals indicated that they have adopted the policy.
