Illinois Attorney Praises Joint Commission’s Pilot Project to Reduce Risk of Wrong-Site Surgery | WPN World People News

Early results indicate progress in a pilot project that is aimed at reducing the risk of doctors operating on the wrong patient or wrong body part.

The project has identified that the likelihood of “defective cases” can be reduced through quality control in scheduling, pre-operative and operating room settings, the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare recently announced. Defective cases involve causes or risks that can result in wrong-site or wrong-patient surgical errors.

For example, improving documentation and verification during pre-op has cut the risk of a wrong-site surgery by 33 percent, the Joint Commission said.

“These are promising results,” Illinois medical malpractice attorney Patrick A. Salvi says. “Wrong-site and wrong-patient surgeries should never happen – especially when doing something as simple as verifying patient information before picking up a scalpel could avoid disaster in the first place.”

Salvi is the managing equity partner of Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard, P.C., a leading Illinois medical malpractice law firm that handles cases involving surgical malpractice in Chicago, Cook County, Lake County and across Illinois.

According to the Joint Commission, there is no concrete way to know how many surgical errors occur nationwide because many states don’t require hospitals to report them. However, the agency estimates that as many as 40 wrong-site surgeries are performed each week.

Eight hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers from across the country are participating in the pilot project, including the Center for Health Ambulatory Surgery Center in Peoria.

“It’s good to see that Illinois healthcare providers are taking the issue of wrong-site surgeries and medical negligence seriously by actively participating in such a worthwhile project,” says Salvi, who represents Illinois medical malpractice victims in personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits.

“It’s easy to say, ‘We are committed to the prevention of wrong-site and wrong-patient operations.’ It’s another thing to show a commitment to prevention by allowing an accrediting agency to review your procedures and offer suggestions to eliminate existing risk factors.”

Last year, 93 cases of wrong-site surgeries were reported to the Joint Commission, compared with 49 in 2004, according to a June 20 article in The Washington Post. However, reporting surgical errors to the organization is voluntary. That puts the responsibility on doctors and hospitals to own up to their mistakes.

“Obviously, it’s terrifying for a surgeon, hospital or clinic to admit that they made a gross error, like amputating the wrong arm,” Salvi says. “But reporting can help the Joint Commission determine how widespread the problem really is. It helps Illinois patients get the treatment they need and deserve.”

Surgical malpractice often involves more than one mistake or negligent action, which makes the Commission’s big-picture approach to preventing wrong-site and wrong-patient operations critical, the Chicago lawyer adds.

“It can be a chain reaction,” Salvi says.

For example, the defect might start with scheduling the incorrect procedure in booking. That is followed by marking the wrong body part in pre-op. Then, a doctor or nurse might fail to check the patient file before surgery starts or neglect to inform the medical team about the particulars of the operation, Salvi explains.

“Obviously the totality of all of those circumstances would be disastrous, and it would certainly merit a medical malpractice lawsuit,” Salvi says.

Malpractice lawyers are well-versed in medical jargon, have access to medical experts and understand the laws that protect people when surgical negligence occurs, he points out.

“There’s no question that victims of surgical mistakes suddenly find themselves in terrible crisis,” Salvi says. “Although they may not ever recover from the surgical mistake, they may at least obtain compensation that can help them rebuild their lives.”