BERLIN, May 16 (Xinhua) -- The medical service of the German public health insurance funds (MDK) recorded 3,497 errors in German hospitals and doctors' surgeries last year, according to assessment statistics presented by the MDK on Thursday.
The MDK compiled 14,133 medical testimonials based on suspected medical errors brought by patients in Germany. In every fifth case, the treatment error caused damage to the patient.
Almost one in three of the cases where the patient suffered harm, the damage was permanent and in 107 cases, an error even led to or contributed to death, according to the German health insurance body.
"Our review statistics show only a small extract, however, and therefore, no general statements can be derived on the hazard risk," said Stefan Gronemeyer, deputy managing director of the medical service of the federal association of German public health insurance funds (MDS).
"Scientific studies assume that there are about 30 undiscovered cases for every treatment error found. The number of unreported cases is high," said Gronemeyer.
The most important thing, according to the MDS director, was to report on errors that could be safely prevented and at the same time caused major damage, so-called "Never Events".
These "Never Events" included medication mix-ups, mixing up the side of the patient's body to be operated on, or foreign bodies remaining in the patient after operations.
In order to systematically avoid these "Never Events" in future, Gronemeyer suggested creating a national list of cases and deploying patient safety officers to promote safety culture in Germany.
In the MDK statistics, two thirds of the allegations of treatment error by German patients concerned inpatient treatment, mostly in hospitals, while the other third concerned medical practices.
The statistics showed that the majority of treatment errors concerned orthopedics and trauma surgery, with 31 percent. The lowest number of errors were care-related.
"The background to this distribution is that most allegations of treatment errors relate to surgical interventions and these are mostly made in inpatient care," said Astrid Zobel, chief physician at the Bavarian branch of MDK.
"An accumulation of allegations says nothing about the error rate or the safety in the respective specialist area," noted Zobel.
Instead, accumulations said much more about how patients experienced treatment, said the insurance fund association.
According to the German Ministry for Health, doctors in Germany "will be liable for a medical error if they caused damage to your health by disregarding generally accepted professional standards."
However, this made it "very difficult to assess whether or not there is a treatment error," it noted.
