More safety work needed in outpatient settings, study suggests

Becker's Healthcare May 7, 2024
Mackenzie Bean

While preventable harm in hospital settings has been a widely discussed issue for decades, new research suggests that adverse events are relatively common in outpatient settings, marking a critical opportunity to improve safety.

A team led by researchers at Boston-based Mass General Brigham conducted the study published May 7 in Annals of Internal Medicine. Researchers analyzed data on 3,103 patients who received care at 11 outpatient sites in Massachusetts in 2018.

Four key findings:

• Seven percent of patients had at least one adverse event, and 1.9% experienced at least one preventable event.
• Adverse drug events were the most common type (63.8%), followed by healthcare-associated infections (14.8%) and surgical or procedural events (14.2%).
• About 17% of adverse events...

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