WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 (UPI) -- Hospitals made 17 percent fewer medical errors in 2013 compared to previous years because of an effort to improve the quality of care and reducing avoidable errors, government officials said. These improvements have saved some 50,000 lives, according to a new report recently released.
There were 1.3 million fewer hospital-acquired infections between 2011 and 2013 compared to all of 2010, according to the report from the Department of Health and Human Services. That's a 17 percent decrease in avoidable hospital errors from 2010.
Even with the decrease, the report said "there is still much more work to be done," adding the rate of medical errors and hospital mistakes is "still too high." Official said they couldn't explain the exact reasons for the decrease in hospital errors, but gave credit to public and private efforts to reduce harm.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Mathews Burwell is expected to discuss the data on Tuesday. It is based on information from thousands of medical records.
A 1999 Institute of Medicine report estimated that hospital errors kill as many as 98,000 people a year.
