The headline from Thursday, Jan. 21, “Medical center lists zero mistakes,” warrants further explanation. For the story’s sake, it was correct, but at the same time it could be misleading. We did make mistakes this past year. But those mistakes just weren’t considered one of the state’s 28 events that should never happen, so they didn’t come out in the Minnesota Department of Health’s “Adverse Health Event Report.”

We know the headline was not the complete story and the patients to whom these mistakes happened know that as well. So we want to set the record straight.

Tribune writer Brie Cohen’s article was accurate in that we had no “reportable mistakes,” but the report only lists mistakes in the 28 categories like wrong-site surgery or leaving an item in a patient after surgery.

While the errors we made weren’t one of the 28, they were still errors. In fact, it is doubtful that any medical facility could say it was totally error-free when all mistakes are considered. We take all mistakes seriously.

As such, we’ve met with the patients, their families, and the staff involved and we’ve worked to ensure the errors don’t happen again. We continue to encourage our staff to report errors or near misses, and we thoroughly examine each event or potential event to make process changes and educate our staff to avoid future errors.

Patient safety is paramount to us. To err is human, but to admit our mistakes and learn from them is the only way to do better.

Mark Ciota, M.D., is the CEO of Albert Lea Medical Center.