Medical errors are the scariest thing for anyone who is involved in Healthcare. Patients who are the eventual victims are usually frightened each time they undergo a treatment.

The US Senate disclosed that after heart disease and cancer, medical errors are the third most noted cause of death in the United States. A report says, every year medical errors cost $1 trillion, 400,000 lives, and affects 12 million people because of the unknown mistakes made while treating the patient.

Though physicians and staff are putting their maximum effort to increase patient safety by avoiding faults, it has still been challenging to curb medical errors in the past few years. Various researchers and surveys are done each year to minimize these mishaps; still, there is no system to code these deaths.

People visit hospitals when they get sick. Although hospitals try to give their one hundred percent efforts to cure them there still occur some unknown mistakes. According to a survey report of 9.5%, people are dying due to the complications caused by medical errors.

Hospitals need to concentrate more on their care quality and safety measures to reduce the percentage of errors.

Problems in ambulatory settings

Many treatment mistakes happen because of improper record maintenance and manual inaccuracies. The utilization of medical records is considerably low due to lack of reliable systems to record test reports which result causes a delay in diagnosis.

Also, staffs are not fully equipped with devices for updating patient data which sources to an imprecise data record.

Some common Medical errors

1. Physician Error 2. Diagnosis Error 3. Nurse Error 4. Surgical Error 5. Communication Error 6. Medication Error 7. System Error 8. Right and Left side body mix Error etc.

Some of the medical errors are very easy to find. Treatment-related errors are more noticeable compared to diagnostic and prevention errors. The reason why it is easily detected is that of its adverse outcomes.

Adverse events are visibly seen after few days of errors made. Until these adverse events take place we will not know about the occurrence of errors. These kinds of difficulties can be avoided with near to real-time record maintenance.

Will Technology help Hospitals to Reduce Medical Errors?

Present healthcare system relies on technology to avoid errors and it involves spending thousands on it to ensure patient safety. However, there are some issues with interoperability and limitations due to inconsistencies of the system.

In a Survey conducted it was figured out that system inconsistency issue between system and devices were the primary reason for most of the medical errors.

Errors not only costs human life but also costs the providers. Hospitals are moving to cloud environment to solve compatibility issues and reduce security threats. Cloud-based interoperability will ensure efficient & quick transfer of data and also data can be viewed in multiple systems simultaneously without any intervention.

Data Security is still a question!

There are few security and privacy concerns we need to look at. In August 2016 alone there were 44 reports of data breaches and in total 8,804,608 of patient records that have been breached.
To reduce the hacking, rate providers and device vendors are now focusing on cybersecurity.

Medical errors can be reduced only when providers and physicians truly come together in terms of care delivery, efficiency and show interest in the implementation of new technologies.