Hospitals routinely violate a New York State law requiring that they tell the state promptly about medical errors that harm patients, an audit released yesterday said. The audit found that hospitals often delay for weeks or months reports that might be critical to a timely investigation, and sometimes never report the mistakes at all. The audit, conducted by the state comptroller, Alan G. Hevesi, found thousands of instances in which hospitals failed to turn over prompt information concerning episodes as serious as patient deaths and mistaken surgery. But the State Health Department punished the hospitals for the lapses only on...