Berlin (pag) – In the treatment error statistics for the year 2021, collected by the German Medical Association (BÄK), 1,416 treatment errors have been determined. Of these, 1,293 bear responsibility for damage to the patient’s health, in 180 cases there is a treatment error without causal damage to health.
Last year, the BÄK processed 5,324 substantive decisions on alleged malpractice nationwide.The most common diagnoses in which fault was suspected were knee and hip arthrosis, as well as ankle and lower leg fractures. In 400 cases, treatment errors have been found, but these have not had any health effects.
Prof. Andreas Crusius, Chairman of the Standing Conference of the Expert Commissions and Arbitration Boards of the BÄK, which are responsible for the statistics and processing of errors, also refers to the increasing number of treatment cases in clinics and practices: The total number of outpatient treatments increased by 183 million to a total of 719 million from 2004 to 2019 and by 2.6 million to a total of 19.4 million cases in hospitals. Measured against this, the number of errors is in the per mille range. Crusius cites the lack of time and staff in patient care as a source of danger, as well as the economic framework conditions of the health system created by politics. These are «not aimed at maximum patient safety, but at maximum efficiency».
The intention of the annual treatment error statistics is to identify error frequencies, to work out their causes and thus to establish the quality of care in terms of patient protection.The Vice President of BÄK, Dr. Ellen Lundershausen, emphasizes: «Every mistake within one treatment is one too many. Our goal is to prevent the same mistake from happening twice.»
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Source — https://www.univadis.de/viewarticle/1400-behandlungsfehler-im-letzten-jahr