BOSTON -- Preventable medical errors in hospitals continue to be a leading cause of death and injury in the United States, and the effort to improve patient safety by the hospital industry "is too slow and should be cause for great alarm," according to a study released last week by HealthGrades, a research firm that analyzed the prevalence of patient safety incidents for Medicare patients at every U.S. hospital.

"Overall, we see the number of patient-safety incidents in American hospitals continuing to increase, at an enormous cost, and we still see a large gap between the incidence rates at the nation's top-performing and worstperforming hospitals," said Dr. Samantha Collier, vice president of medical affairs for Golden, Colorado-based HealthGrades.

The "Third Annual Patient Safety in American Hospitals' Study," the largest annual study of its kind, examined the records of Medicare beneficiaries treated at about 5,000 hospitals nationwide between 2002 and 2004 and used 13 patient safety indicators developed by the federal government to track admissions.

Key findings include: More than 250,000 patients died as a result of preventable medical errors between 2002 - 2004, a death toll that would rank medical errors as the sixth leading cause of death in America, ahead of death due to diabetes, liver disease and pneumonia. Approximately 1.24 million total patient safety incidents occurred between 2002 and 2004, compared with 1.14 million between 2000 and 2002. The patient safety incidents were associated with $9.3 billion in excess costs during the years studied. Massachusetts, often touted as a "Medical Mecca," ranks a disappointing 22nd in the nation for overall patient safety, and has a similar ranking on all 13 of the patient safety indicators used in the study to measure the quality and safety of care. The authors attributed the majority of the preventable patient deaths to "failure to rescue" (which refers to nurses and physicians failure to promptly diagnose and treat conditions that develop in a hospital), bedsores and postoperative sepsis (a serious bloodstream infection).

"The majority of complications and deaths reported in this study are linked to problems associated with poor RN staffing levels in hospitals and the study's findings underscore the need for pending legislation, H. 2663, that would protect patients by setting safe limits on the number of patients assigned to registered nurses," according to Julie Pinkham, executive director of the Massachusetts Nurses Association.