Detecting and reducing hospital adverse events: outcomes of the Wimmera clinical risk management program.

Objectives: To determine if an integrated clinical risk management program that detects adverse patient events in a hospital, analyses their risk and takes action can alter the rate of adverse events.

Design: Longitudinal survey of adverse patient events over eight years of progressive implementation of the risk management program.

Participants And Setting: 49,834 inpatients (July 1991 to September 1999) and 20,050 emergency department patients (October 1997 to September 1999) at a rural base hospital in the Wimmera region of Victoria.