Treatment mistakes often at dentists & homes

Medical service of health insurance presents new data

06/05/2014

New data on the topic of treatment errors: The Medical Service of the health insurance (MDK) presented on Tuesday a current statistics on treatment errors in clinics and medical practices in Berlin. Accordingly, the MDK had in 2013 about 14,600 times an opinion on a suspected treatment error created - in 3,700 cases confirmed the suspicion.

14,585 treatment error reproaches examined in 2013
As reported by the medical service of the umbrella association of the health insurances (MDS) in a recent press release, the experts of the Medical Service of the Health Insurance (MDK) had examined a total of 14,585 treatment error reproaches last year. Nearly 70 percent (10,183) of the allegations were directed against hospitals, the remaining 30 percent (4,402 cases) concerned a general practitioner or a general practitioner. Although more than 2,000 cases were examined more than in the previous year (12,483 expert reports), the number of confirmed errors had fallen slightly, according to the MDS. According to this, the MDK appraisers came to just under 3,687 times that a treatment error actually occurred (2012: 3,900), which corresponds to a share of 25.3%. The difference between the inpatient and outpatient sectors was small: Of the 10,183 hospital-targeted cases, 24.8% were confirmed, of which physicians were based, 26.5% of MDK assessors confirmed error allegations.

Decline in confirmed cases: trend or random fluctuation?
„Compared to previous years, the number of assessed treatment error reproaches has increased by 17 percent. We attribute this to the educational work of recent years and the increased public awareness, but also to the patients' rights law, which came into force in 2013.“, so Dr. Stefan Gronemeyer, Chief Physician and Deputy Managing Director of MDS. Whether the decline in confirmed cases is now a trend or a random fluctuation remains to be seen, Gronemeyer continues.

Orthopedics, trauma surgery and general surgery most commonly affected
As in previous years, patients had the highest incidence of operations related to operations, most often orthopedics and trauma surgery and general surgery faced with treatment errors, while the next few were dentistry and gynecology. „In relation to the number of allegations, most treatment errors are confirmed in nursing and dentistry. This, too, corresponds to the picture of the previous years“, so Prof. dr. Astrid Zobel, senior physician social medicine of the MDK Bavaria. Nevertheless, according to the physician, no conclusions can be drawn as to the quality of the treatment in general or especially error-prone specialist groups - because the presented figures are absolute numbers, which in each case should be considered in relation to the total number of treatments in the respective discipline. (No)