The OIG has issued a report entitled “Few Adverse Events in Hospitals Were Reported to State Adverse Event Reporting Systems.”  Based on a sample of 780 hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries in October 2008, the OIG estimates that 60% of “adverse and temporary harm events” nationally occurred at hospitals in states with reporting systems, but only about 12% of events nationally met state reporting requirements.  In addition, the OIG estimates that hospitals reported only 1% of events; the OIG suggests that this low reporting rate “is more likely the result of hospital failure to identify events than from hospitals neglecting to report known events” since most of the reportable incidents were not identified by internal hospital incident reporting systems.  The OIG observes that “CMS, States, and other stakeholders should be aware of this low rate of reporting to State systems as they consider strategies to reduce adverse events in hospitals.”  In connection with the release of the report, the OIG has created a “spotlight” page on its website providing an overview of its work on hospital adverse events that cause harm to patients, and this topic is the subject of a new OIG podcast.