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. 2022 Jul 27:9:875426.
doi: 10.3389/fmed.2022.875426. eCollection 2022.

Interventions to reduce the incidence of medical error and its financial burden in health care systems: A systematic review of systematic reviews

Ehsan Ahsani-Estahbanati  1 , Vladimir Sergeevich Gordeev  2   3 , Leila Doshmangir  1   4
Affiliations

Interventions to reduce the incidence of medical error and its financial burden in health care systems: A systematic review of systematic reviews

Ehsan Ahsani-Estahbanati et al. Front Med (Lausanne). .

Abstract

Background and aim: Improving health care quality and ensuring patient safety is impossible without addressing medical errors that adversely affect patient outcomes. Therefore, it is essential to correctly estimate the incidence rates and implement the most appropriate solutions to control and reduce medical errors. We identified such interventions.

Methods: We conducted a systematic review of systematic reviews by searching four databases (PubMed, Scopus, Ovid Medline, and Embase) until January 2021 to elicit interventions that have the potential to decrease medical errors. Two reviewers independently conducted data extraction and analyses.

Results: Seventysix systematic review papers were included in the study. We identified eight types of interventions based on medical error type classification: overall medical error, medication error, diagnostic error, patients fall, healthcare-associated infections, transfusion and testing errors, surgical error, and patient suicide. Most studies focused on medication error (66%) and were conducted in hospital settings (74%).

Conclusions: Despite a plethora of suggested interventions, patient safety has not significantly improved. Therefore, policymakers need to focus more on the implementation considerations of selected interventions.

Keywords: financial burden; hospital; intervention; medical error; public health; quality of care.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
PRISMA flow diagram for the review process.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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