Centre for Policy on Ageing



Incidence and types of preventable adverse events in elderly patients — population based review of medical records
Author(s)	Eric J Thomas, Troyen A Brennan
Journal title	British Medical Journal, no 7237, 18 March 2000
Pages	pp 741-744
Keywords	Medical care ; Drugs ; Falls ; Discharged patients ; In-patients ; Variance analysis ; United States of America.
Annotation	An adverse event is defined as an injury caused by medical management (rather than the disease process) resulting in either prolonged hospital stay or disability at discharge. Medical records of some 15,000 patients in the US states of Utah and Colorado discharged from hospital in 1992 were reviewed for incidence of preventable adverse events. Patients aged 65 and over experienced more preventable adverse events than under 65s. Preventable adverse drug events, falls, and events related to medical procedure were more common in older patients, probably because of the clinical complexity of their care rather than age based discrimination. Such preventable adverse events should be targets of efforts to prevent errors. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-000508210 A
Classmark	LK: LLD: OLF: LFD: LF7: 3YA: 7T *
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...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.