SynthesisJournal of general internal medicine2020
Rate of Preventable Mortality in Hospitalized Patients: a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.
Synthesis in Journal of general internal medicine, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed.
- Caregiver and Patient Input for Quality and Safety (C-PIQS) Pilot Study: Patient-Initiated Safety Observations Using an m-Health Tool.Journal of patient safety · 2026Observational
- Hospital standardised mortality ratio: a novel method and approach to risk adjustment.BMJ open quality · 2026Article
- Reliability and validity testing the Chinese version of the nursing surveillance scale: a cross-sectional study.BMC nursing · 2025Article
- Choice of needleless connector technology as a risk reduction strategy for catheter related bloodstream infection, mortality, and cost: A secondary data analysis.The journal of vascular access · 2025Article
- Epidemiologic Characteristics and Management of Sepsis Among Previously Healthy Patients.CHEST critical care · 2025Article
- Preventable in-hospital deaths and years of life lost were uncommon among patients in a Finnish secondary teaching hospital.Archives of public health = Archives belges de sante publique · 2025Article
- Giving patients, families and staff a reliable voice in acute care: Expert guidance for implementation of Martha's Rule in UK hospitals.Future healthcare journal · 2025Article
- Nurse judgements of hospitalized patients' safety concerns are affected by patient, nurse and event characteristics: A factorial survey experiment.Journal of clinical nursing · 2025Article
- Using gaming to prepare health professional students to practice systems thinking.Learning health systems · 2025Article
- Root causes behind patient safety incidents in the emergency department and suggestions for improving patient safety - an analysis in a Finnish teaching hospital.BMC emergency medicine · 2024Article
- Optimizing Neuroscience Mortality: A Collaborative Approach to Documentation Improvement.Neurology. Clinical practice · 2024Article
- Capability to identify and manage critical conditions: effects of an interprofessional training intervention.BMC medical education · 2024Article
- Improving escalation of deteriorating patients through cognitive task analysis: Understanding differences between work-as-prescribed and work-as-done.International journal of nursing studies · 2024Article
- Sepsis and underlying comorbidities in intensive care unit patients : Analysis of the cause of death by different clinicians-a pilot study.Medizinische Klinik, Intensivmedizin und Notfallmedizin · 2024Observational
- Burden of serious harms from diagnostic error in the USA.BMJ quality & safety · 2024Article
- Risk Prediction Models for Hospital Mortality in General Medical Patients: A Systematic Review.American journal of medicine open · 2023Article
- Patients admitted on weekends have higher in-hospital mortality than those admitted on weekdays: Analysis of national inpatient sample.American journal of medicine open · 2023Article
- Measuring the Trustworthiness of Health Care Organizations and Systems.The Milbank quarterly · 2022Article
- Development of Compartment Syndrome after Radial Artery Puncture in a Patient with Acute Hypoxemic Respiratory Failure due to COVID-19.Case reports in medicine · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe number of preventable inpatient deaths in the USA is commonly estimated as between 44,000 and 98,000 deaths annually. Because many inpatient deaths are believed to be preventable, mortality rates are used for quality measures and reimbursement. We aimed to estimate the proportion of inpatient deaths that are preventable.
methodsA systematic literature search of Medline, Embase, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library through April 8, 2019, was conducted. We included case series of adult patients who died in the hospital and were reviewed by physicians to determine if the death was preventable. Two reviewers independently performed data extraction and study quality assessment. The proportion of preventable deaths from individual studies was pooled using a random-effects model.
resultsSixteen studies met inclusion criteria. Eight studies of consecutive or randomly selected cohorts including 12,503 deaths were pooled. The pooled rate of preventable mortality was 3.1% (95% CI 2.2-4.1%). Two studies also reported rates of preventable mortality limited to patients expected to live longer than 3 months, ranging from 0.5 to 1.0%. In the USA, these estimates correspond to approximately 22,165 preventable deaths annually and 7150 deaths for patients with greater than 3-month life expectancy. DISCUSSION: The number of deaths due to medical error is lower than previously reported and the majority occur in patients with less than 3-month life expectancy. The vast majority of hospital deaths are due to underlying disease. Our results have implications for the use of hospital mortality rates for quality reporting and reimbursement. STUDY REGISTRATION: PROSPERO registration number CRD42018095140.
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