“The AMA newsletter published the mortality effects of the decrease in hospital complications in just 48 months.” Bill Chesnut, MD
Drop in hospital-acquired conditions prevented 87,000 deaths, report shows
USA Today (12/2, O’Donnell) reports that infections and other conditions “caused by hospitals dropped 17% from 2010 to 2014, which prevented 87,000 deaths and saved $20 billion in health care costs, federal health officials said Tuesday.” The hospital-acquired conditions detailed in the report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality include “adverse drug events, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, central line-associated bloodstream infections, pressure ulcers, and surgical site infections.”
The Washington Post (12/2, Sun) says a “number of public and private health-care initiatives have been put in place in the past four years that reward or penalize hospitals based on how they perform on a variety of patient quality and safety measures.”
The Huffington Post (12/2, Cohn) reports that for every 1,000 patients “admitted to and then discharged from a hospital, the agency found, roughly 121 of them developed such a condition.”
Kaiser Health News (12/2, Rau) reports Dr. Richard Kronick, director of the AHRQ, said, “We are still trying to understand all the factors involved, but I think the improvements we saw from 2010 to 2013 were very likely the low-hanging fruit, the easy problems to solve