Mandatory Reporting of Adverse Incidents in Florida Hospitals
Florida law requires that adverse incidents in hospitals must be reported to government agencies. This hospital accident and injury data is tracked and monitored. Usually, the reported incidents can be obtained by the public. The adverse incident report is always available to the effected patient or the patient’s legal representative.
What is a Hospital Adverse Incident?
Hospitals must report adverse medical incidents and hospital-acquired injuries, including but not limited to:
- Bedsores
- Falls
- Broken Bones
- Wrong Site Surgery Errors
- Medication Mistakes
- Retained Surgical Instruments
How Do I Get My Adverse Incident Report?
Adverse incident reports and hospital accident reports are legally available through Amendment 7 discovery. Click here to learn more about obtaining your hospital adverse incident report.
A Patient’s Right to Know Under Florida’s Amendment 7
Florida law is clear that a patient has a legal right to know, read and obtain any adverse incident report that pertains to them. Additionally, your medical malpractice attorney should be able to obtain similar adverse incident reports of a specified injury, so long as the other patient’s private information is redacted.
For example, if you are interested in reviewing an adverse incident report regarding your father and his hospital-acquired pressure sore, this report must be made available to you under Florida law.
Additionally, if you’d like to see how many other patients developed a pressure ulcer during their hospitalization, your attorney should be able to obtain this through adverse incident discovery. The only difference here is that hospital incident reporting involving other patients will require redaction of the patient’s name, address, date of birth, social security number, etc. After the patient’s confidential information is redacted, the report itself regarding their pressure ulcer can be obtained by your lawyer through discovery.
Why Should I Care About Getting Other Patient Injury Incident Reports?
It greatly helps your case if you can show a pattern of preventable injury. For instance, if your grandmother suffered a preventable hospital resulting in a broken hip, you should investigate how many other patients suffered a fall in the hospital during that time period.
If the number of hospital falls tripled during the month of February when your Grandma fell, this will require further digging on your attorney’s part to determine the root cause of the growing fall problem at the hospital.
Where Are Adverse Incidents Reported?
Depending on the hospital accidental injury, adverse incidents may be reported to either state or federal agencies. The Joint Commission requires reporting of preventable hospital injuries, like hospital bedsores and patient falls.
Hospital bedsores and pressure ulcers are “never events” and must be reported to federal agencies, like the AHRQ.
Additionally, depending on the injury, hospital injuries may be reported to the Florida Department of Health and/or the Agency for Healthcare Administration (also known as AHCA).
I Am Having Trouble Obtaining my Hospital Incident Report – What Can I Do?
Sadly, hospitals do not always follow the rules when a patient is unrepresented. If you believe you or a loved one suffered a preventable injury, our malpractice attorneys can help you obtain your hospital incident report. Call us today for a free case consultation – 561-717-0817.
