PROVIDENCE — When you’re a patient headed for surgery, the risk of a medical mistake can make an already frightening situation that much more unnerving.

And when you’re an exacting physician, the possibility of an error can be equally troubling.

Gauze left inside an incision, a medication mix-up, or as Rhode Islanders remember, surgeons operating on the wrong side of a patient’s head — three times in a single year.

Politicians and medical professionals agree, the number of mistakes, both real and averted, “is currently unacceptable.” A recent national study of hospital-based physicians said 1 in 5 had been involved in a mistake or a near miss.

Now state lawmakers from both parties, backed by much of the medical community, are proposing a system to investigate and track errors and close calls at hospitals and nursing homes, by creating a Patient Safety Organization. The Health Department currently requires hospitals and nursing centers to report errors, but not would-be mistakes. And it does little to document trends or address clinical protocols.

If approved, the Rhode Island initiative would be the first of its kind in the country. It would be overseen by the Health Department.

Error reports would be both voluntary and confidential and done through a hot line. State officials acknowledge it will take something of a cultural shift to convince doctors and nurses to agree to pick up the phone and admit mistakes they’ve made or witnessed from colleagues, but short of major medical advances it may be the best shot at reducing the now-consistent number of errors.

“This is really looking at ‘how do we change the system statewide to reduce these errors?’ because each of these problems usually reflects an underlying problem,” state Health Director Dr. David R. Gifford said.

Rhode Island’s patient safety initiative follows the Federal Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005, a national law that made it easier for hospitals to report mistakes and close calls without fear of retribution.

Since then, hospitals in other states have started to track incidents — a few have even set up anonymous hot lines to encourage doctors and nurses to report incidents — but it’s been a patchwork approach, handled mostly by individual institutions. Officials say never before has a state agreed to track these trends.

If Rhode Island’s legislation passes, the state would pay nothing for the program. The $600,000-a-year cost would be split among hospitals, insurers and nursing centers on a per-bed basis. Hospitals would pay about $15,000 a year, nursing homes would pay about $2,000.

Gifford said the Health Department will solicit bids from nonprofits or agencies interested in running the organization, including the state hospitals association, the Quality Institute or possibly Brown University. The state will oversee the initiative, but data collection will be run by an outside agency.

Lifespan chief executive officer George Vecchione said the price of the program is small given the good that could come of it.

“Health-care professionals are there to help others in need,” he said. “Many of them are devastated when an error occurs. So if we can help correct or help prevent errors from occurring in the future, I think this is a modest investment.”

Not to mention the fact that a single medical error can cost a hospital millions in legal claims.

But Virginia Burke, president and CEO of the Rhode Island Health Care Association, said the initiative could have a serious impact on nursing homes.

It’s not that she’s against the idea, “Who could be against patient safety?” she noted.

The problem is that nursing homes are already facing the possible passage of Governor Carcieri’s budget proposal to allow some elderly patients to leave nursing centers in favor of at-home care, cutting already slim revenues. Add to that patient safety initiative costs and some nursing homes could be in trouble.

“If the state were paying for it,” she said, “we’d be right on board.”

Rhode Island lawmakers however know that the biggest selling point of their legislation may be that it won’t cost the state a dime in a year when a budget deficit has seriously curtailed the influx of proposed new initiatives.

House Democrat Joseph M. McNamara, of Warwick, and Senate Republican David E. Bates, of Barrington, the bills’ sponsors, say the program would provide patients more information about their hospitals so they can make informed decisions.

“The formation of a Patient Safety Organization that uses and analyzes clinical data to improve patient safety is a model that’s been utilized by other non-medical industries such as the aviation industry … to advance public safety and promote quality improvement,” McNamara said.

When applied to health care, that strategy could help better medical performance and let patients focus on the important thing: getting well.

cneedham@projo.com