By Staci HuppHoosiers will have more access to information about serious medical errors made by hospitals because of new rules adopted by state health officials Wednesday.

The new rules make Indiana the second state after Minnesota to require that hospitals disclose their errors to the public.The change is a comfort to Lynda Phebus, whose husband, Robert, died in 2003 partly because a surgical towel had been left in his abdomen during back surgery three years earlier."You're not talking about the wrong piece of paper or blueprint, you're talking about people's lives," the Lafayette woman said.That and countless other medical mistakes have never been available for public review. State officials hope that will change in February, when the first medical error report is expected to be made public.The report will identify only hospitals, not patients or medical officials.Rules adopted by the State Board of Health on Wednesday center on 27 mistakes that hospitals and surgery centers must report to the state within 15 days of confirming they were at fault and up to six months after a mishap.The list includes surgery on the wrong body part, deaths from contaminated drugs and sexual assaults on patients.Terry Whitson, an assistant commissioner at the Indiana State Department of Health, estimated that Indiana hospitals have reported fewer than 100 errors since reporting began under orders from Gov. Mitch Daniels on Jan. 1.Hospital officials traditionally have fought public disclosure of errors, but some have made peace with the idea."Human nature dictates that you tend not to want to expose your weaknesses to the public, but we're a different type of industry," said Richard Graffis, chief medical officer for Methodist and Indiana University hospitals and Riley Hospital for Children. "The consequences are so big."State officials say the law aims to improve public safety rather than blame individual hospitals.Important lessons already have come out of a medication mix-up that caused the deaths of three premature babies this week at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, said Judith Monroe, the state health commissioner.Labels for the pediatric doses of Heparin, an anti-clotting drug, were nearly identical to those of adult doses, which were given to the infants by accident."We need to go back and put pressure on the manufacturers to make sure that pediatric and adult doses have dramatically different packaging," said Monroe, who sits on the state health board. "It's going to take all of us to have a culture of safety to make a difference. And we do need to look at it as a system."Experts say that approach, coupled with a provision in the rules that error reports can't be used in patient lawsuits, are more likely to ensure compliance from hospitals."It's not simply a way to take competitive advantage of your cross-town rival," said Arthur Caplan, chairman of the medical ethics department at the University of Pennsylvania. "I think we'll see that people respond to it, try to adjust their behavior and try to institute systems to reduce errors."Caplan said the rules should extend to doctors and nurses, too. "Hospitals don't make errors, people do," he said.Graffis also expressed concerns that the rules are open to interpretation, which could make more compliant hospitals look worse in the public eye."Policing this is pretty tough," Graffis said. "Clearly, it depends on the honesty of the institution."Minnesota was the first state to require hospitals to publicly disclose their mistakes, in 2004. Several more states are expected to follow suit.Indiana's final rules are largely a tweaked version of temporary conventions that hospitals started following in January.Phebus hopes the new law will help other people avoid the heartache she has lived with for three years."You learn to go on, but I don't think you ever, ever get over it," she said. "I really miss him."

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