A report released by the US government has revealed that employers shell out around $1.5 billion a year in health insurance bills for surgery errors which can be prevented to a large extent. These errors mainly occur during surgery or in post-surgical care and are responsible for almost one-tenth of the total surgery-related deaths which occur every year in the United States.

The report compiled by the Agency for Healthcare and Quality studied the records of more than 161,000 patients who underwent surgeries from 2001 to 2002 and which were covered under employer-based health plans. The study revealed that a patient who developed a post-surgical infection cost the insurers $19,480 or 48 percent extra while someone who suffered from post-surgical respiratory failure added another $28218 or 52% to the insurance bill.

According to patient records, the subjects studied were in the age group of 18-64 and it was estimated that almost a third of them due to died post-surgical complications after being discharged from the hospital. The preventable causes of surgery-related deaths ranged from blood clots and reopened wounds during surgery to infections and nursing errors like pressure ulcers, bed sores and hip fractures.

-Kalyani Mookherji.