None of the hospitals reported the problems, a violation of state law, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health.
For several years now, hospitals in Pennsylvania and New Jersey have been required to report medical mistakes and serious complications to state agencies charged with reducing medical errors. But some hospitals aren't fully complying, undermining efforts to improve patient safety, experts say.
In New Jersey, five of the state's 80 hospitals failed to report a single preventable mistake last year, officials said. In Pennsylvania, some facilities didn't report any serious events or even the near misses that might have harmed patients.
"I don't know how many is enough, but zero is a bad number," said James Bagian, head of the Department of Veterans Affairs' National Center for Patient Safety.
"Anybody that is supposed to report close calls and has zero reports is clueless," he said. "Management is asleep at the switch and just waiting until they kill someone."
There currently is no way for consumers to know how local hospitals are doing. Agencies in both states declined requests by The Inquirer to release the number of reports from individual hospitals. So the public can only learn that a hospital isn't reporting mistakes in those rare instances when the health department cites it for failing to comply with the law.
Twenty-six states require hospitals to report mistakes, and by next year Massachusetts, California and Minnesota will make the reports public.
Hospital associations in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey say members are training more staff and working to improve treatment in everything from medication safety to fall prevention.
"We are only a few years into this process," said Aline Holmes of the New Jersey Hospital Association, and "we have seen a steady increase in reporting."
