The Washington Post (12/3, Millman, 4.9M) reports that efforts to make hospital care safer “have resulted in an estimated 50,000 fewer patients dying because of avoidable errors in the past three years,” according to a new report from the Department of Health and Human Services. US hospitals reported 1.3 million fewer hospital-acquired conditions from 2010 to 2013, representing a 17 percent drop. The reduction “of these avoidable incidents — such as falls, pressure ulcers, adverse drug events and more — meant $12 billion in savings to the health-care system between 2011 and 2013, according to HHS.”
USA Today (12/3, 9.86M) reports that the reasons for the drop in avoidable errors “are not fully understood, but they occurred at a time of ‘concerted attention by hospitals throughout the country,’ the report says.” Those efforts were prompted in part by safety initiatives and payment incentives under the Affordable Care Act, officials say. In a statement, HHS Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell said, “Today’s results are welcome news for patients and their families,” adding, “These data represent significant progress in improving the quality of care that patients receive while spending our health care dollars more wisely.”
The Wall Street Journal (12/3, Subscription Publication, 5.62M) reports that HHS officials said they believe the improvement in hospital safety to be unprecedented, though data from before 2010 was collected differently and isn’t comparable.
The Los Angeles Times (12/3, Levey, 4M) reports that a public-private partnership to reduce hospital errors, called the Partnership for Patients, “has come under sharp criticism from several leading quality improvement advocates, who have questioned how the administration is gathering data and evaluating the impact of the multibillion-dollar initiative.” According to the Times, the 17-percent drop in hospital-acquired infections and other avoidable errors is still “far short of the administration’s goal of reducing these conditions by 40% over three years.”
The Washington Times (12/3, Howell, 373K) reports that the study released Tuesday by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality said the drop in errors had resulted in 35,000 fewer deaths in 2013 alone. “Just think for a moment about what saving even one life means to a family, a congregation, a community,” Burwell said at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Quality Conference in Baltimore. Burwell added that the 17-percent reduction in errors “represents historic progress on health care quality.”
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The AP (12/3, Johnson) reports that Medicare and private insurers “have started reducing or withholding payments when hospitals make mistakes,” and the report mentions those financial penalties as factors that likely contributed to the improvement. In May, “the administration reported the Medicare readmission rate for hospitals has been slowly dropping, from 19 percent in 2011 to 17.5 percent two years later.”
The Hill (12/3, Ferris, 241K) reports that the prevalence “of adverse drug events, bloodstream infections, pressure ulcers and ventilator-associated pneumonia each declined by 25 percent” since 2010, the report found.
McClatchy (12/2, Subscription Publication, 27K) reports that HHS analysts examined 18,000 to 33,000 medical records for each of the years covered by the study. They estimate “that nearly 10 percent of hospitalized patients in the U.S. experienced one or more of the numerous hospital-acquired conditions they were looking for.” That rate “is still too high,” the report found.
NBC News (12/3, 3.76M) reports that Federal officials and hospitals “started looking at hospital errors in 1998, when the Institute of Medicine released a report showing that as many as 98,000 people a year died from medical errors.”
Also covering the story are Reuters (12/3), CNBC (12/3, 2.08M), Congressional Quarterly (12/3, Subscription Publication, 967), the Baltimore Sun (12/2, 857K), Forbes (12/2, 12.06M), Baltimore Business Journal (12/3, Gantz, Subscription Publication, 64K), Modern Healthcare (12/2, Subscription Publication, 225K), TIME (12/3, 23.35M), US News & World Report (12/2, 661K) and Vox (12/3, 344K).