Comparing patient-reported hospital adverse events with medical record review: do patients know something that hospitals do not?

Background: Hospitals routinely survey patients about the quality of care they receive, but little is known about whether patient interviews can detect adverse events that medical record reviews do not.

Objective: To compare adverse events reported in postdischarge patient interviews with adverse events detected by medical record review.

Design: Random sample survey.

Hospital workload and adverse events.

Context: Hospitals are under pressure to increase revenue and lower costs, and at the same time, they face dramatic variation in clinical demand.

Objective: : We sought to determine the relationship between peak hospital workload and rates of adverse events (AEs).

Methods: A random sample of 24,676 adult patients discharged from the medical/surgical services at 4 US hospitals (2 urban and 2 suburban teaching hospitals) from October 2000 to September 2001 were screened using administrative data, leaving 6841 cases to be reviewed for the presence of AEs.