Hospital Errors Rise to Three Percent: HealthGrades Patient-Safety
Study.
"The cost of medical errors at American hospitals in both mortality
and dollar terms continues to be significant,
Top-Performing Hospitals Had 40% Lower Rate of Medical Errors Compared
with Poorest Performers
Potentially Preventable Deaths: 247,662 Over Three Years
Cost to Hospitals: $8.6 Billion Over Three Years
=E2=80=A2 Approximately 206,286 patient-safety incidents and 34,393 Medicare
deaths could have been avoided; and
=E2=80=A2 $1.74 billion could have been saved.
Individual Hospital Ratings Posted to www.HealthGrades.com
GOLDEN, Colo. (April 2, 2007: Corrected 4:50pm) =E2=80=93 Patient safety
incidents at the nation=E2=80=99s hospitals rose to three percent over the
years 2003 to 2005, but the nation's top-performing hospitals had a 40
percent lower rate of medical errors when compared with the poorest-
performing hospitals, according to the largest annual study of patient-
safety issued today by HealthGrades, the leading independent
healthcare ratings company.
The HealthGrades study of 40.56 million Medicare hospitalization
records over the years 2003 to 2005
also found:
=E2=80=A2 Patient-safety incidents continue to rise in American hospitals,
with 1.16 million preventable patient-safety incidents occurring over
the three years studied among Medicare patients in the nation's
hospitals, an incidence rate of 2.86 percent.
=E2=80=A2 247,662 deaths were potentially preventable over the three years,
and Medicare patients who had one or more patient-safety incidents had
a one-in-four chance of dying.
=E2=80=A2 The excess cost to hospitals was $8.6 billion over three years, w=
ith
some of the most common incidents proving to be the most costly.
=E2=80=A2 Ten of the 16 patient-safety incidents tracked worsened from 2003=
to
2005, by an average of almost 12 percent, while seven incidents
improved, on average, by six percent. Patient-safety incidents with
the greatest increase in incident rates were post operative sepsis
(34.28 percent),
post-operative respiratory failure (18.70 percent) and selected
infections due to medical care (12.23 percent).
=E2=80=A2 Patient-safety incidents with the highest incidence rates were
decubitus ulcer, failure to rescue and post-operative respiratory
failure.
"The cost of medical errors at American hospitals in both mortality
and dollar terms continues to be significant, and the 'chasm in
quality' between the nation's top and bottom hospitals, which
HealthGrades has documented in this and other studies, remains." said
Dr. Samantha Collier, HealthGrades' chief medical officer and the
primary author of the study. "But the nation's best-performing
hospitals are
providing benchmarks for the hospital industry, exercising a vigilance
that resulted in far fewer in hospital
incidents among the Medicare patients studied."
The fourth annual HealthGrades Patient Safety in American Hospitals
Study applies methodology developed by the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to
identify the incident rates of 13 patient safety incidents among
Medicare patients at virtually all of the nation's nearly 5,000
nonfederal hospitals. Additionally, HealthGrades applied its
methodology to identify the best-performing hospitals, or
Distinguished Hospitals for Patient Safety=E2=84=A2, which represent
the top five percent of all U.S. hospitals.
Ratings for individual hospitals were posted today to HealthGrades'
consumer Web site,
www.healthgrades.com.
The following are the 16 patient-safety incidents studied:
=E2=80=A2 Accidental puncture or laceration
=E2=80=A2 Complications of anesthesia
=E2=80=A2 Death in low-mortality DRGs
=E2=80=A2 Decubitus ulcer
=E2=80=A2 Failure to rescue
=E2=80=A2 Foreign body left in during procedure
=E2=80=A2 Iatrogenic pneumothorax
=E2=80=A2 Selected infections due to medical care
=E2=80=A2 Post-operative hemorrhage or hematoma
=E2=80=A2 Post-operative hip fracture
=E2=80=A2 Post-operative physiologic metabolic
derangement
=E2=80=A2 Post-operative pulmonary embolism or
deep vein thrombosis
=E2=80=A2 Post-operative respiratory failure
=E2=80=A2 Post-operative sepsis
=E2=80=A2 Post-operative abdominal wound
dehiscence
=E2=80=A2 Transfusion reaction
Distinguished Hospital Awards and Findings
Of the nearly 5,000 hospitals studied, the HealthGrades study
identified 242 hospitals =E2=80=93 those in the top
five percent of all hospitals -- to serve as a benchmark against which
other hospitals can be evaluated,
naming them Distinguished Hospitals for Patient Safety.
On average, these hospitals had a 40 percent lower rate of patient-
safety incidents when compared with
the poorest-performing hospitals. If all hospitals performed at the
level of the Distinguished Hospitals for
Patient Safety, the study found:
=E2=80=A2 Approximately 206,286 patient-safety incidents and 34,393 Medicare
deaths could have been avoided; and
=E2=80=A2 $1.74 billion could have been saved.
To be ranked in overall patient-safety performance, hospitals had to
be rated in at least 19 of the 28
procedures and diagnoses rated by HealthGrades and have a current
overall HealthGrades star rating of at
least 2.5 out of 5.0. The final ranking set included 752 teaching
hospitals and 857 non-teaching hospitals.
The top 15 percent, or 242 hospitals, were identified as Distinguished
Hospitals for Patient Safety, and
represent less than five percent of all U.S. hospitals examined in the
study.
The study says, "Despite the flurry of research, publications and
process improvement activity that has occurred since the IOM report
there is a growing consensus that not much progress has been made
leading to a visible national impact. Our findings support this
consensus. However, our findings also support that progress continues
to be made at the top. Distinguished Hospitals for Patient Safety
continue to lead the nation in providing safer care=E2=80=A6resulting in mu=
ch
lower costs to society. We believe that Distinguished Hospitals have
deliberately chosen and maintained patient safety as a top priority."
The full study is available at www.healthgrades.com.
About HealthGrades
Health Grades, Inc. (Nasdaq: HGRD) is the leading healthcare ratings
organization, providing ratings and
profiles of hospitals, nursing homes and physicians. Millions of
consumers and many of the nation=E2=80=99s largest employers, health plans =
and
hospitals rely on HealthGrades=E2=80=99 independent ratings and decision
.
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