Half of patient safety accidents in the past five years were serious accidents... Most cases of surgery in other areas

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Seongho Seong = Half of the patient safety accidents reported to the government over the past five years were found to be serious accidents subject to statutory reporting.

Among serious accidents, the most common cases involved surgery on areas other than those for which the patient had given consent.

According to patient safety accident report data received from the Ministry of Health and Welfare by the office of Democratic Party lawmaker Heo Jong-sik, a member of the National Assembly Health and Welfare Committee, on the 10th, a total of 361 accidents were reported from 2021 to May of this year.

When dividing the total of 361 reported cases by type of medical institution, the most common were general hospitals (185 cases), tertiary general hospitals (94 cases), hospitals (37 cases), nursing hospitals (34 cases), and psychiatric hospitals (11 cases).

Among all accidents, there were 181 accidents that must be reported to the government, or 50.1% of the total.

These statistics are in accordance with the Patient Safety Act and are different from the total number of domestic accidents.

The Patient Safety Act defines a patient safety accident as an accident in which a risk to patient safety, such as death, disease, or disability, has occurred or is likely to occur while health care providers provide services to patients.

This law allows health care providers or patients to report patient safety accidents to the Ministry of Health and Welfare. In particular, in the case of serious accidents that cause serious damage to the patient due to surgery that is different from what the patient consented to, the head of the medical institution must report it without delay.

According to data from the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the total number of reported patient safety accidents decreased from 97 in 2021 to 49 last year.

However, the number of serious accidents subject to mandatory reporting remains at 30 to 40, including 30 in 2021, 36 in 2022, 42 in 2023, 28 in 2024, and 31 in 2025.

Last year, the proportion of mandatory reporting issues among all reported cases reached 63%.

Among all mandatory reporting subjects, surgeries on other parts of the body accounted for the most with 125 cases.

There were 25 cases of medication dose administration errors, and surgeries on other patients (5 cases) or surgeries of different nature (3 cases) also occurred.

Eight incidents of physical violence subject to mandatory reporting were reported over the past five years, three each occurring at a psychiatric hospital and a nursing hospital.

Rep. Heo Jong-sik emphasized, "As errors in the surgery and medication process can leave irreparable damage to patients, medical institutions should not operate confirmation procedures in a formal manner. We must establish a patient confirmation, surgical safety, and medication management system that is appropriate for the size of the hospital and the characteristics of treatment, and ensure that field workers can freely report safety issues."