What are adverse events?

Accidents can strike precisely where doctors treat them: the hospital.

Coming in the form of a bacterial infection or slip, these accidents are called “adverse events,” and cover complications tied to patient care rather than an underlying condition.

Though any patient can experience an adverse event, more than 25% of Medicare patients reportedly had a poor experience while receiving care between 2008 and 2016, according to an Office of the Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS-OIG) report from 2018.

To cross the technical threshold from temporary harm to a serious adverse event, an incident must extend a patient’s stay in a healthcare facility, cause them permanent harm, lead to a medical intervention to keep them alive, or contribute to their death, according to the HHS-OIG.

The frequency of adverse events varies, but 12% of 770 Medicare enrollees hospitalized in October 2018 experienced an adverse event, one HHS-OIG report found in 2022. Of those events, the most common were tied to medications (41%), such as delirium or a dangerous blood pressure drop, while 28% of patients experienced a medical procedure complication and 18% had a hospital-acquired infection.

Spikes in cost

An adverse event during a hospital stay can also spike the bill upon patient discharge.

The 2022 HHS-OIG report estimated that adverse events, along with temporary harm events, cost the Medicare system hundreds of millions of dollars in October 2018 alone.

Those costs aren’t spread across the healthcare system equally, either. Last December, a JAMA study found that hospital-acquired conditions for Medicare enrollees was 25.4% higher in hospitals under private equity management, compared to other ownership models, Healthcare Brew previously reported.