Even though a Wyoming statute mandates that every licensed health care facility in the state must report adverse medical errors to the Wyoming Department of Health, members of the health care profession said it's not happening.

"I have kind of been following it and have been disappointed in the reporting," said Brent Sherard, director of the health department, at Monday's Wyoming Healthcare Commission meeting. "Incentives are the key and without them reporting will remain poor."

Fran Cadez, attorney for the health department, spoke to the community about how medical errors are now reported and discussed problems in the state's error reporting system, which was written into state statute last year.

Cadez said errors are under reported because there is no standard definition for an adverse medical error that health care facilities recognize, and there is no incentive for them to make medical error reporting a priority for them. Also, there is no standard form to fill out when an error occurs, and Cadez said sometimes people just fax over a piece of paper.

"The preliminary data we have is just from a few hospitals," Cadez said. "There really isn't any incentive to get people to report. Even if an error was reported there is no way to know if anything was done about it."

Daniel Perdue, vice president of the Wyoming Hospital Association, said that the statute did not promise enough protection to the doctors and the hospitals from punishment for the errors they report, even though the statute says the information provided cannot be used in court.

"This one tops the list of why of hospitals aren't reporting errors," said John Glode, a Cheyenne cardiologist and member of the commission. "They just don't trust the reporting system."

Perdue said the Wyoming Hospital Association provided input on the language of the statute to ensure protection, but the Legislature did not heed to all its suggestions.

Another problem is that the statute requires each health care facility to create a patient safety officer to help with the reporting of errors, and Cadez said not all facilities have established this.

"I realize we are still in the infancy stage of finding a way in which everyone is comfortable in reporting errors," Cadez said. "If we are going to participate at a national level in trying to fix this problem, we might need to alter Wyoming statute."

The commission hopes to also influence legislation to help out with the shortage of health care providers in Wyoming by producing a study. It has hired the Health Professions Tracking Center of the University of Nebraska to conduct a survey of practicing health care providers in the state.

Kolene Kohll, director of the center, presented the data her company has collected during the first two phases of the survey at Monday's commission meeting.

Some of the important numbers from the survey, which is neither conclusive nor complete, included that there are 853 licensed physicians who actively practice in Wyoming, but 48 percent of Wyoming counties lack a physician that specializes in OB/GYN services or psychiatry. A third phase of the survey will be completed later this year and early next year to locate even more physicians in the state and obtain more data.

Other information the survey looked at was the age of physicians, how many hours they work per week, retirement and relocation plans as well as data on other types of health care providers.

Members of the commission asked Kohll to break down the data even further and calculate how many full-time physicians there would be based on the total number of hours all physicians in Wyoming work, because not all 853 of the physicians are full time.

"We have a lot of data and different ways to assemble it," said Dixie Roberts, the commission chair. "Now we have to figure out how we will deliver it to the Legislature."