Learned and Unlearned Lessons in Quality and Safety From Hospitals’ COVID-19 Burdens

Abstract

Metersky et al 1 present compelling evidence that adverse events (AEs), including medication errors and hospital-acquired infections (HAIs), increased among patients both with and without COVID-19 during weeks in which hospitals experienced greater COVID-19 admission burdens during the COVID-19 pandemic. The risk of AEs increased 9% with each 10% increase in COVID-19 burden, defined as the daily mean number of COVID-19 inpatients per 100 hospital beds. The investigation by Metersky et al 1 improved on the methods of existing work through its use of hospital-specific COVID-19 admissions data (rather than regional or aggregate hospital data) from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and its reliance on systematically adjudicated AEs from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The authors concluded with the recommendation to + Related articleAuthor affiliations and article information are listed at the end of this article.