Overall, 92% of those polled said there should be public reporting of medical errors, up from 62% in a similar poll conducted in 2002.
None of this is lost on state and federal legislators who have drafted—or are drafting—legislation to make data on hospital medical errors open to public scrutiny, Mr. Wade noted. “Everybody wants to take charge of quality inside hospitals. … The government's trying to do it, and there's a lot of pressure to demonstrate the quality of care in the hospital.”
“Why haven't hospitals taken the lead to do these things themselves? We're trying to accomplish these things, but it takes time,” he said, pointing to the Hospital Quality Alliance sponsored by the AHA, the Association of American Medical Colleges, and the Federation of American Hospitals.
“We sat down 2 years ago and decided to begin to put data in front of the public,” he said. The resulting Web site,