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Health Areas » Hospital Research » Patient Safety 2008

Patient Safety Study 2008: Hospital Research

Fifth Annual Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study (April 2008)

For this report, HealthGrades identifies the patient safety incident rates for nearly every hospital in the country using the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Patient Safety Indicator methodology1 to analyze three years of Medicare data (2004-2006). In addition to this analysis, HealthGrades creates a composite score of the results of the patient safety indicators and identifies the best-performing hospitals to establish a best-practice benchmark against which other hospitals can be evaluated. See Appendix A for list of the best-performing hospitals. This study also identifies trends in important patient safety issues among the nation's hospitals. Specific results for each of the nation's non-federal hospitals can be found at www.healthgrades.com.

Introduction

For the fifth consecutive year, HealthGrades has analyzed patient safety among Medicare patients in all U.S. hospitals. It's clear that improvement requires measurement. During the last five years, much attention has been paid to research and development of improvement strategies and patient safety measurements, and important progress has been made. For example, we have witnessed the promulgation of "never events" and "safe practices," and increased transparency and accountability when errors do occur. Also, more hospitals than ever are pledging to report their performance on safe practices and have agreed not to bill for preventable medical errors. New benchmarks in safety are being created and healthcare professionals are witnessing that zero defects are in fact possible.

Progress is being seen. We now have convincing case studies that perfection is possible when the will to change and improve is present and the effort is made to implement new practices. While these examples illustrate that we have a much clearer idea of what we need to do, formidable barriers remain. Many in the industry continue to deny that truly safe care is achievable, thus the status quo continues, resulting in variation in patient safety in U.S. hospitals that is large and unpredictable. Numerous studies, including the 2007 AHRQ National Healthcare Quality Report (NHQR) assessing the state of hospital quality and patient safety, conclude and support the findings that the progress remains modest and variation in healthcare quality remains high.

Meanwhile, consumers have become more involved and sophisticated in their healthcare decisions and management. More and more people are using the Web to obtain medical and quality information, particularly as more of the direct cost of healthcare is being shifted to the consumer. As a result, the need for additional transparency and public accountability regarding patient safety is increasing. With death due to preventable medical errors being a leading cause of death4, it is imperative that the development and dissemination of highly visible consumer guides and public performance reporting be a priority for the industry.

For a fifth year, HealthGrades has researched and publicly reported information on hospital patient safety. HealthGrades used AHRQ's patient safety indicators1 to identify the patient safety incident rates for every non-federal hospital in the country using three years of Medicare data (2004-2006). In addition to identifying the rates of patient safety incidents, HealthGrades created a composite score to identify the best-performing hospitals in the U.S. during 2004 to 2006. These hospitals were named the 2008 HealthGrades Distinguished Hospitals for Patient SafetyTM.

Source: Fifth Annual Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study (April 2008)

Read full Health Grades report