Prevalence, severity, and nature of preventable patient harm across medical care settings: systematic review and meta-analysis

Summary

This research paper from Panagioti et al., published in the BMJ, systematically quantified the prevalence, severity and nature of preventable patient harm across a range of medical settings globally.  They found that 6% patients suffered preventable harm and, of these, 12% (of the 6%) suffer severe harm or death.

Although a focus on preventable patient harm has been encouraged by the international patient safety policy agenda, there are limited quality improvement practices specifically targeting incidents of preventable patient harm rather than overall patient harm (preventable and non-preventable). Developing and implementing evidence-based mitigation strategies specifically targeting preventable patient harm could lead to major service quality improvements in medical care which could also be more cost effective.