House Republicans are working to move legislation to better monitor patient safety, an issue that has gained public interest since the recent death of a young girl who received incompatible organs at Duke University. Today, the House Ways and Means Committee is to mark up its version of a bill (HR 877) to encourage doctors to voluntarily report errors they made.

This measure will have to be reconciled with a slightly different measure (HR 663) that the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed earlier this month. The full House may vote on the issue during the week of March 10, "patient safety awareness week". The Ways and Means Committee legislation is similar to a bill the panel reported out last September.

Both bills would allow the Department of Health and Human Services to create "patient safety organizations" that would collect confidential data on medical mistakes from hospitals, doctors and other health care providers. The reporting would be voluntary and in most cases could not be used for evidence by malpractice attorneys.

The patient safety organization would then analyze the error, identify solutions and provide feedback to correct mistakes. A database would be created to track national trends. No state law that has reporting requirements would be pre-empted or affected by the legislation.

The Energy and Commerce Committee version would prohibit the use of patient safety reports in malpractice lawsuits or accreditation actions and would allow fines of up to $10,000 for individuals who disclosed confidential, identifiable information submitted to the patient safety organizations or the patient safety database. The Ways and Means bill provides for a penalty of $50,000 for employers who retaliate against whistleblowers while the Energy and Commerce bill has a fine of $20,000.

Last year, Congress took up at least four bills to encourage health care providers to report medical errors in an effort to identify ways to improve patient safety. However, the issue fell victim to election-year politics.

Similar bills have been introduced in the Senate. Sen. Jeffords (I-Vermont) introduced a medical errors bill last year but action was stalled because of concerns raised by then-Chairman Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts). Kennedy was concerned that such legislation could weaken state medical quality programs as well as the ability of patients to obtain redress when they are injured as a result of medical mistakes.