Surgical Error
Under Minnesota law, certain medical errors need to be reported to the Minnesota Department of Health. Each year, the Minnesota Department of Health analyzes the incident reports for the year and compiles and publishes a final report entitled, “Adverse Health Events in Minnesota.”
“Adverse events” under Minnesota law include the following surgery-related medical errors:
- Surgery performed on the wrong body part (wrong-site surgery)
- Surgery performed on the wrong patient
- The wrong surgical procedure performed on a patient
- A foreign object left in a patient after surgery
- Death of a normal, healthy patient during or immediately after surgery.
“Surgery,” as defined in the Adverse Health Events Reporting Law, includes endoscopies, regional anesthetic blocks and other invasive procedures.
These cases often involve serious injury or death. For example, in one case, a sponge was left in a patient’s leg after surgery. The leg became infected and eventually had to be amputated. In a recent case, Surgeons at Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park took out a person’s healthy kidney and left the cancerous kidney.