In a story published in today’s edition of Modern Healthcare, a recent poll released by Consumer Reports, proved that the public is concerned with hospital errors, and furthermore, the public is not aware of how to go about reporting such errors, should they occur to a patient or family member.

More than 75-percent of 1,000 people, contacted via telephone, expressed great concern about acquiring infections, during hospital stays. About 71-percent were concerned with overall medical errors. Such results make it evident that the public worries about the standards of hospital’s today, in regards to patient care.

“It’s not surprising to find such high levels of public concern about hospital-acquired infections and medical errors given that one in four patients is harmed during treatment,” said Lisa McGiffert, director of Consumers Union’s Safe Patient Project, in a news release. “Our poll found that the vast majority of the public wants to know more about their local hospital’s record for keeping patients safe and supports efforts to require disclosure of this critical patient-safety information.”

Another story that ran in a recent edition of The Huffington Post reported that, in America, the fourth leading cause of death is hospital-acquired infections.

Could this problem, in part, be what happens when physician services are not being properly utilized by hospitals – say for example, a primary care doctor is assigned to a hospital’s emergency room, where only residency-trained, board certified emergency physicians are prepared to handle any, or all, injuries and illnesses?