Albert Lea Medical Center reported no medical mistakes last year. This is an improvement from the previous year, when it reported two mistakes. Both of them were leaving a foreign object inside a patient after surgery.

There is a list of 28 different health events that hospitals in Minnesota must report to the Minnesota Department of Health. These mistakes are released in the “Adverse Health Events” report. The sixth annual report came out last Thursday, and it listed the mistakes from October 2008 to October 2009.

Lori Routh, nurse executive at the Albert Lea Medical Center, said she was very pleased at all of the effort the staff at ALMC put into place to change the processes in surgery.

As a result of the two retained foreign objects incidents in 2008, all of the team members — physicians, nurses, first assistants, surgical technicians and anesthesiologists — were trained with new procedures, Routh said.

Routh said two women in surgical services, Julie Boyer, nurse manager and Penny Polis, supervisor, were behind this process to make sure these mistakes didn’t happen again, no matter what the case.

Routh said with each case, members of the team must take time to pause and count all the instruments and sponges. They count at the start of the procedure, they count when they close the inner layer of the patient and they count when they close the skin layer of the patient. They also count if two of more staffers leave the operating room to go on break. If the count is off, any member of the team will say “stop” and they recount, look in the drapes (the material that covers the patient in surgery) and if needed, order an X-ray.

There was one incident at the medical center when a sponge count was off last year. The team found the sponge in the drapes.

“The biggest thing is working on education for all staff,” Routh said.

That is what they plan to do to continue having no medical mistakes. They will have ongoing training, stress the importance of the process and have audits when Boyer and Polis are in the operating room observing to make sure counts are occurring.

Routh said this year the Albert Lea Medical Center is going to look into getting new technology for counting sponges and instruments. The technology is similar to the bar-code technology at the grocery store. A member of the surgical team would scan a pack of sponges at the beginning and then scan the package again for the correct number.

“Human error is possible, so anytime you can automate, it increases safety,” Routh said.

Albert Lea Medical Center performed 3,274 surgeries from October 2008 to October 2009. Routh said this number is approximate to the previous year, when two mistakes occurred.

Overall in Minnesota, the number of medical mistakes in hospitals was fewer and less severe than in previous years. There were 301 serious mistakes reported and four people died. The four deaths are the fewest since the reports began. The highest number of deaths was 24 in 2006.

The number of foreign objects left in patients in Minnesota hospitals after surgery was 38, up one from the year before.