Dive Brief:
- Using Hospital Safety Score data to grade more than 2,500 U.S. hospitals, analysts found those that received a D or F grade had a 49.8% higher risk of avoidable death compared with A-grade hospitals, according to a report released Monday prepared for The Leapfrog Group.
- Hospitals were assessed based on medical errors, accidents, injuries, and infections.
- The report also shows although hospital care has improved since the Hospital Safety Score effort was launched in 2012, the number of avoidable deaths remains high.
Dive Insight:
Avoidable deaths were 9% higher in B-grade hospitals and 35% higher in C-grade hospitals than A-grade hospitals, according to the analysis, led by Matt Austin, an assistant professor at the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, and the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
In addition, findings show approximately 206,021 deaths in the U.S. are avoidable every year, though the figure only accounted for a subset of avoidable harms in hospitals.Out of the total amount of avoidable deaths, 162,117 occur in B, C, D, and F-grade hospitals.
The analysts concluded about 33,439 lives could be saved annually if all hospitals were to perform as well as those that received an A-grade organization.
“The Hospital Safety Score alerts consumers to the dangers, but as this analysis shows, even A hospitals are not perfectly safe,” The Leapfrog Group President and CEO.Leah Binder said.
The Score was updated this month to include patient survey results about communication about medicines, discharge, nurses, and doctors as well as the responsiveness of a hospital staff. It also for the first time included MRSA Bacteremia and C.difficile data.