Nearly 1 in 5 Iowans has been involved in a medical error in their own care or in the care of someone close to them, yet only 4 in 10 of those individuals were notified of the error by the responsible provider, according to a peer-reviewed article that has been published in the September Journal of Patient Safety, an international medical journal. David Lind, president of Heartland Health Research Institute in Clive, who co-authored the study with David Andresen and Andrew Williams, conducted a survey of 1,010 Iowa adults in the summer of 2017. According to the study, most Iowans strongly agree that Iowa hospitals (79.5%), physicians (74.1%), and nursing homes (82.2%) should be required to report all medical errors to the patient and to a state agency. “Quantifying the magnitude of the medical error problem is an essential first-step toward solving these safety issues,” Lind said in a newsletter post. “The hope is that vulnerabilities in the healthcare delivery process will be exposed so that solutions can be found. However, the U.S. does not have a bona fide national strategy to assess medical errors, and, as a result, hospitals and clinicians around the country do not report medical errors accurately and consistently.” To read a Business Record article from 2018 about reaction to the research, click here.