WASHINGTON, May 25 (UPI) -- About 7.5 percent or 1 in 13 patients in Canadian hospitals will experience an adverse event -- a rate, researchers said, about twice as high as in the United States.
"The Canadian Adverse Events Study: "The incidence of adverse events in hospital patients in Canada," was published Tuesday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, the first study of its kind.
Co-author Ross Baker, a researcher at the University of Toronto, told a news briefing the study provides a baseline "to help focus attention on this issue and stimulate efforts to improve patient safety in our hospitals."
The study found 185,000 of some 2.5 million medical and surgical hospital admissions in Canada in 2000 were associated with an adverse event -- defined as "an unintended injury or complication resulting in death, disability or prolonged hospital stay caused by healthcare management rather than the patient's underlying condition."
Baker said data showed 37 percent of the adverse events could have been prevented, but also noted not all such events are preventable. Among patients suffering adverse events, 1.6 percent died.
Instances of adverse events were higher in teaching schools -- due mainly to the complexity of care often provided by those facilities.
Comparing Canadian results to other countries, the researchers found the 7.5 percent rate more than doubled the 3 percent in the United States, was equal to the rate in the United Kingdom, but was lower than rates found in Australia, New Zealand and Denmark.
On the healthcare cost chart, patients with adverse events spent on average six additional days in the hospital.
The study involved seven Canadian universities and included analysis of 3,745 adult patient charts from 20 acute care hospitals in five provinces.
CALLING ALL CIO'S TO CHICAGO
Chief information officers at U.S. health plans are coming together next month in Chicago for the America's Health Insurance Plans annual CIO's Technology & Business Solutions Conference. It's part of AHIP's 2004 Institute that runs June 16-18.
On the agenda are topics such as technology to improve clinical processes, linking infrastructure improvements to technology, transparent claims processes, health plan Web sites, data mining and outsourcing. Presenters will include representatives from health plans as well as vendors. More information on the 2004 Institute is found on the AHIP Web site.
ANOTHER TAKE ON PROPOSED HSA DEDUCTION
President Bush's fiscal year 2005 budget proposal to allow taxpayers to deduct the cost of premiums for high-deductible insurance plans associated with health savings accounts has some economists concerned.
Though HSAs already break new tax ground in allowing the contribution to go into and come out of the account tax free, the new proposal would add to that a separate deduction for premiums. The Senate Republican Task Force has included this in its recommendations for health insurance, but it is not getting a lot of coverage. This is because most people have their hands full sorting out the original HSA policy, which became law with the Medicare reform bill last December.
Insurers and employers find the HSA option intriguing and already the government predicts it will be so popular its cost to the government will be $16 billion over 10 years -- 2.5 times greater than the Joint Committee on Taxation had estimated last year.
Professor Jonathan Gruber, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told a news briefing held by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Tuesday his analysis finds just the deduction aspect would cost $1.4 billion, but could leave some 350,000 more people uninsured. The deduction would be only good on health plans purchased from the individual market -- not an HSA option proffered by an employer.
Gruber said the deduction, therefore, would reduce the tax advantages employers now enjoy by being able to deduct their cost of employee premiums so it would "on net raise the number of uninsured."
Gruber's model finds 1 million uninsured would purchase an HSA/high deductible plan but an estimated 1.4 million who had employer group coverage would lose it because their mostly small or medium sized companies would decide to stop offering insurance as a benefit and allow people to pick up HSA coverage on their own.
He predicted that healthier, wealthier and younger employees would choose the HSA option and use it for investment purposes, but lower-wage workers would not be able to afford it, would not derive any tax benefit from it because they are in such a low tax bracket and therefore would join the ranks of the uninsured.
GAO CALLS FOR EXPEDITED REVIEW OF ANIMAL DRUGS
Both sides in the controversy over using antibiotics in animals are claiming victory in a General Accounting Office report out this week. The GAO recommended the Food and Drug Administration expedite its current risk assessment process to look at drugs deemed essential to human health given to animals. The concern is that overuse of antibiotics could produce resistant bacteria, which then could be ingested by humans via the meat they eat.
The GAO also called for the departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services to begin a plan to collect more data on the use of antibiotics in animals.
The report said researchers disagree about the extent of harm to humans -- many studies find a significant risk, while a small number say the risks are minimal. The GAO's concern is the government is not moving fast enough to get to the bottom of the issue and lacked specific usage data.
The advocacy group Keep Antibiotics Working quickly published a response, saying the GAO study determined antibiotic use was an unacceptable risk, bolstering its support of bipartisan companion bills, S. 1460 and H.R. 2932, to phase out the routine use of medically important antibiotics in livestock and poultry.
"This GAO report confirms that routine overuse of antibiotics in chickens, pigs and beef cattle is a ticking time bomb, for both human health and agricultural trade," said Dr. David Wallinga of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's Antibiotic Resistance Project.
Meanwhile, Alexander Mathews, president of the Animal Health Institute, issued a statement that said: "Risk assessment on specific drug/disease combinations is the proper way to assess the need for regulatory action. It is encouraging that risk assessments done to date show antibiotic use in animals poses a very low risk to human health."
The issue now heads back under the radar and to the study table.
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