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When considering the volume of patients who seek and procure hospital treatment it is understandable that ''human error'' will account for a small percentage of medical mistakes, because no human is infallible. Any medical intervention carries with it a risk, however small, but regardless of the nature of the hospital admission, a patient has the right to be made fully aware of the potential for error regarding their intended treatment, and any previous misadventures that has occurred as a result of a misadventure.

In the United States a person is required to pay towards medical care, and for such a reason it is perfectly understandable that you would expect to be able to access hospital records to inform yourself of the depth of medical errors that can be attributed to the care recieved in a specified hospital or medical facility.

Ed Lovern wrote an article in 2001 when he was the Washington, D.C., bureau chief for Modern Healthcare, a business health care magazine, stating that, ''Hospitals should be required to report certain medical errors to publicly accessible, state-run databases to create a level of accountability now lacking in the health care system, the National Quality Forum recommended in a report released last week.The list of what the NQF calls "never events," or events that should never occur in a hospital, would provide a standard for states to use in refining or developing systems for collecting adverse medical-event information.''

But according to the National Quality Forum (NQF) in their 2008 update, ''The NQF-endorsed Safe Practices are a set of voluntary consensus standards that serve as a tool for health care providers, purchasers, and consumers to identify and encourage practices that will reduce errors and improve care,'' and with the emphasis on ''voluntary concensus'' at this present time only 26 states officially require their hospitals to report serious medical errors.

The initial response of certain hospitals volunteering this information can be seen as a step towards the improvement of health care within the United States, but will the necessity of a national requirement for disclosing this data be the only plausible solution in fully utilizing its effectiveness.

Without a clear and concise evaluation of the United States as a whole, and not a partial report of adverse medical occurrences, it would be difficult to highlight any areas of weakness that should be addressed and improved where applicable, so that a similar level of care

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