Hospital Errors are the Third Leading Cause of Death in U.S., and New Hospital Safety Scores Show Improvements Are Too Slow
Headlines like these are
very alarming to the public. Left to
your imagination you envision people with three eyes and hair growing out of
their ears running around the hospital hurting people. The problems are real, but normally you have
good people doing bad things to good people.
Allow me to share with you a
personal example I have never shared with anyone and about which I remain
deeply ashamed. In 1971 I was a young
United States Air Force Medical Service Corps Officer at the Wurtsmith Air
Force Base Hospital in Oscoda, Michigan.
On of the departments I was responsible for supporting was the clinical
laboratory. The chief laboratory
technician called to my attention that the autoclave, used to sterilize medical
instruments needed a new gasket to seal the doo
Like an eager beaver I
called the company and order a seal on an expedited basis. It arrived overnight. I opened the packaging, went to the
laboratory to install the seal. With no
training, I did it. I must say I had an
uneasy feeling that the fit was not quite right. The laboratory technician thanked me
profusely and he fired up the autoclave.
About two hours later the autoclave exploded and the door of the
autoclave struck the chief laboratory technician in the chest and nearly killed
him. I visited him in the hospital and
apologized profusely. I will never
forget how he looked at me. He could not
hide his contempt.
What should have
happened? I should have assigned the
seal to the biomedical engineering department, and they would have known it was
the wrong seal and the correct seal could have been ordered and installed
properly.
New research estimates up to
440,000 Americans are dying annually from preventable hospital errors. This
puts medical errors as the third leading cause of death in the United States,
underscoring the need for patients to protect themselves and their families
from harm, and for hospitals to make patient safety a priority.
Released by The Leapfrog
Group (Leapfrog) Hospital Safety Score assigns A, B, C, D and F grades to more
than 2,500 U.S. general hospitals. It shows many hospitals are making headway
in addressing errors, accidents, injuries, and infections that kill or hurt
patients, but overall progress is slow. The Hospital Safety Score is calculated
under the guidance of the Leapfrog Blue Ribbon Expert Panel, with a fully
transparent methodology analyzed in the peer-reviewed Journal of Patient
Safety.
Leapfrog, an independent,
national nonprofit organization that administers the Score, is an advocate for
patient safety nationwide.
“We are burying a population
the size of Miami every year from medical errors that can be prevented. A
number of hospitals have improved by one or even two grades, indicating
hospitals are taking steps toward safer practices, but these efforts aren’t
enough,” says Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog. “During this time of
rapid health care transformation, it’s vital that we work together to arm
patients with the information they need and tell doctors and hospitals that the
time for change is now.”
As result of the push for
more public reporting of hospitals’ safety efforts, Leapfrog added two new
measures to the latest Hospital Safety Score release, including
Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infections (CAUTIs) and Surgical Site
Infections: Colon (SSI: Colon). While CAUTIs and SSI: Colon have not received
as much public attention as other measures, they are among the most common
hospital infections and claim a combined 18,000 lives each year. With data from
the CMS Hospital Compare website as well as the Leapfrog Hospital Survey,
Leapfrog now has the publicly available data needed to calculate these critical
measures into the Score.
CAUTI and SSI: Colon are
among the 28 measures of publicly available hospital safety data used to
produce a single grade representing a hospital’s overall safety rating.
The Hospital Safety Score is
a public service available at no cost online or on the free mobile app at
www.hospitalsafetyscore.org. A full analysis of the data and methodology used
is also available on the Hospital Safety Score website.
Key Findings
On average, there was no
improvement in hospitals’ reported performance on the measures included in the
score, except for hospital adoption of computerized physician order entry
(CPOE). The expansion in adoption of this lifesaving technology suggests that
federal policy efforts to improve hospital technology have shown some success.
Of the 2,539 general
hospitals issued a Hospital Safety Score, 813 earned an “A,” 661 earned a “B,”
893 earned a “C,” 150 earned a “D” and 22 earned an “F.”
While overall hospitals
report little improvement in safety, some individual hospitals (3.5 percent)
showed dramatic improvements of two or more grade levels.
The states with the smallest
percentage of “A” hospitals include New Hampshire, Arkansas, Nebraska, and New
Mexico. No hospitals in New Mexico or the District of Columbia received an “A”
grade.
Maine claimed the number-one
spot for the state with the highest percentage of “A” hospitals.
Kaiser and Sentara were among the hospital
systems that achieved straight “A” grades, meaning 100 percent of their
hospitals received an “A.”
For more information about
the Hospital Safety Score or to view the list of state rankings, please visit
www.hospitalsafetyscore.org. Journalists interested in scheduling an interview
should contact LeapfrogMedia@sternassociates.com.
About The Leapfrog Group
The Hospital Safety Score is
an initiative of The Leapfrog Group (www.leapfroggroup.org), a national
nonprofit organization using the collective leverage of large purchasers of
health care to initiate breakthrough improvements in the safety, quality, and
affordability of health care for Americans. The flagship Leapfrog Hospital
Survey allows purchasers to structure their contracts and purchasing to reward
the highest performing hospitals. The Leapfrog Group was founded in November
2000 with support from the Business Roundtable and national funders and is now
independently operated with support from its purchaser and other members.
Jan Ricks Jennings, MHA,
LFACHE
Senior Consultant
Senior Management
Resources, LLC
JanJenningsBlog.Blogspot.com
724.733.0509 Office
412.913.0636 Cell
July, 2021
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