Generally, hospital patients expect that the medical care they receive will improve their health, not worsen it. However, in some instances, patients are harmed as a result of their medical treatment. These instances are generally called adverse events. As part of OIG’s evaluation of quality health care in IHS hospitals, we studied the prevalence of patient harm events in IHS hospitals. In this video, we discuss the findings of this study, including that 4 percent of patients experienced an adverse event and 8 percent experienced a temporary harm event.
Find additional compliance and quality of care trainings at oig.hhs.gov/aian.