The Boston Herald is reporting that doctors at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center operated on the wrong location on three spine surgery patients - all three operations occurred since September.

The errors resulted in federal and state health inspectors citing the hospital for problems in its surgical service. The hospital has now improved its procedures and informed investigators of the changes.

In each case the surgeons miscounted the patient’s vertebrae and operated on a vertebra directly above or below the diseased segment, said Dr. Kenneth Sands, SVP of health care quality at Beth Israel. “It is really strange, and we don’t have an answer as to why these happened’’ said Sands, “it’s still possible to make a human error.’’

The Boston Globe notes "The third patient’s back pain got better, although the surgeon had operated on the wrong location."

The Globe had produced an earlier report looking at surgeries between 2006 and 2008 and found 11 spine surgeries (in Boston area hospitals) that had been done in the wrong locations.

Surgery is generally a last resort for any back pain treatment and generally comes after more conservative treatments have been tried.