Wrong site and wrong patient surgery claims are among the most alarming medical errors a person can face. These events shake a patient’s trust in the health care system, leave lifelong injuries, and raise serious questions about patient safety in the operating room.
These events are not simple mishaps. They reveal serious underlying safety problems inside healthcare organizations, and they are shockingly common. A jaw-dropping report from the Association of Perioperative Registered Nurses (based on data from The Joint Commission) found a 26 percent rise in wrong-site, wrong-procedure, wrong-patient, and wrong-implant surgeries in 2023. This increase shows how quickly a single communication mistake, incorrect patient information, incomplete site marking, or a rushed safety step can lead to a devastating outcome. When these breakdowns occur, the impact on a patient’s body, health, and future is profound.
At Joye Law Firm Injury Lawyers, our attorneys have recovered millions of dollars in settlements in personal injury cases. Since 1968, we’ve built a reputation of putting people first. We don’t just handle legal matters; we care for individuals and families who are navigating some of the hardest moments of their lives. Our work includes fighting for individuals harmed by preventable medical errors that should never occur in any hospital or ambulatory surgery center.
Let a South Carolina medical malpractice lawyer explain what wrong site and wrong patient surgery mean according to the law, how these events happen, and how injured patients can hold health care providers accountable for wrong surgical procedures with a medical malpractice claim.
How Wrong Site and Wrong Patient Surgeries Happen in Modern Healthcare
Wrong-site and wrong-patient surgeries are classified as “never events” because they should never occur when health care professionals follow accepted safety procedures. Despite strong guidance from the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare, the National Quality Forum, the American Hospital Association, the Department of Health and Human Services, and similar organizations, such errors continue across the United States.
These events fall into three categories:
1. Wrong Site Surgery
A wrong-site surgery occurs when a surgical procedure is performed on the wrong part of a patient’s body. Examples include operating on the opposite knee, removing tissue from the wrong breast, or performing orthopedic surgery on the wrong side of a patient’s body. This shows a breakdown in site marking, patient verification, or the time-out process, a critical step in medical procedures where the team stops to verify information before making incisions.
2. Wrong Patient Surgery
Wrong patient errors occur when a procedure intended for one patient is performed on another. These events involve patient misidentification, incorrect paperwork, improper handoffs, and failures in patient information systems. A surgery performed on the wrong person can expose a patient to a procedure that was never needed and leave them with new injuries, while another patient’s medical condition remains untreated.
3. Wrong Procedure Errors
In a wrong procedure event, the surgical team performs the incorrect procedure even though they have the correct patient and the correct site. This often occurs due to communication failures, confusion between similar procedures, or incomplete review of the medical record.
Each event signals deeper safety problems inside the facility, including human error, system weaknesses, rushed preoperative steps, and poor adherence to safety rules written to prevent such mistakes.
