Longitudinal rates of hospital adverse events that contributed to death in Norway and Sweden from 2013 to 2018

Objectives
In this paper, we explore and compare types and longitudinal trends of hospital adverse events in Norway and Sweden in the years 2013–2018 with special reference to AEs that contributed to death.

Design
Acute care hospitals in both countries performed medical record reviews on randomly selected medical records from all eligible admissions.

Analysis: Comparison between Norway and Sweden of linear trends from 2013–2018, and percentage rates of admissions with at least one AE according to types and severities.

Setting
Norway and Sweden have similar socio-economic and demographic characteristics, which constitutes a relevant context for cooperation, comparison and mutual learning. This setting has promoted the use of GTT to monitor national rates of AEs in hospital care in the two countries.

Participants
53 367 medical records in Norway and 88 637 medical records in Sweden were reviewed.

Results
13.2% of hospital admissions in Norway and 13.1% in Sweden were associated with an AE of all severities (E-I). 0.23% of hospital admissions in Norway and 0.26% in Sweden were associated with an AE that contributed to death (I). The differences between the two countries were not statistically significant.

Conclusions
There were no significant differences in overall rates (E-I) of AEs in Norway and Sweden, nor in rates of AEs that contributed to death (I). There was no significant change in AEs or fatal AEs in either country over the six-year time period.