
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, February 7, 1991                   TAG: 9102070232
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                LENGTH: Medium

STUDY: DOCTORS INJURE ONE IN 25

Nearly one in 25 hospital patients suffers injuries at the hands of a doctor, and more than a quarter of those injuries are due to substandard care, says a study to be published today.

While some of the injuries are unavoidable, more than half could be prevented better medical care, the study's authors say.

"There is a lot of substandard care in hospitals in the United States," said Dr. Troyen A. Brennan of the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, one of the principal authors of the study, called the Harvard Medical Practice Study.

He said patients "can reasonably expect the health care community to provide better care," and the findings "should be a stimulus to that."

The study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine involved the examination of records of 30,121 randomly selected patients at hospitals in New York State, said Brennan. It is the largest study ever done of doctors' mishaps, and it provides the best estimate so far of how common such mishaps are, he said.

The problems include such things as drug complications and wound infections, Brennan said. About half of the problems occurred in patients undergoing surgery, he said.

"We see a lot of failure to diagnose cases," he said. "And among the non-surgical cases, the leading problems are pharmaceutical injuries." Problems were more common in the emergency room than in other parts of the hospital, Brennan said.

Lowell S. Levin, a professor of public health at the Yale University School of Medicine, said the study was "not only on the mark, it's very, very conservative."

"If anything, it underestimates the reality," he said. It notes only those doctors' errors that prolong patients' hospital stays or lead to disability, he noted.

"That leaves out all the gray stuff," he said. "For example, substantial rates of hospital-acquired infections that don't disable necessarily, or even extend length of stay, but are certainly serious."

by CNB