‘A’-grade hospitals have 50% fewer avoidable deaths
The Leapfrog Group announced its Hospital Safety Scores, which gives hospitals a grade of “A” through “F” for patient safety.
It is much safer to receive care at an “A” hospital versus a “B,” “C,” “D” or “F” hospital, according to new analysis led by Matt Austin, PhD, assistant professor at the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality and the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Leapfrog contracted with Johns Hopkins Medicine’s Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality on a new analysis estimating the number of avoidable deaths at hospitals in each grade level. The
Findings point to a 9% higher risk of avoidable death in B hospitals, 35% higher in C hospitals, and 50% higher in D and F hospitals, than in A hospitals.
The Hospital Safety Score estimates patients’ relative risk of avoidable death from errors, accidents, and infections and grades hospitals with an “A,” “B,” “C,” “D,” or “F.” The Hospital Safety Score is the only rating that focuses primarily on errors, accidents, and infections in hospitals.
Of the 2,571 hospitals issued a Hospital Safety Score, 798 earned an “A,” 639 earned a “B,” 957 earned a “C,” 162 earned a “D” and 15 earned an “F.”
Compared to “A” hospitals, the relative risk of an avoidable death is 8.5% higher in “B” hospitals, 35.2% higher in “C” hospitals, and 49.8% higher in “D” and “F” hospitals.
Binder
“It is important to recognize that these results reflect average hospital performance in each grade category and individual hospital performance within a letter grade may vary,” says Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group. “We’re able to understand how many lives we can save each year through this research.”
The analysis calculated 206,021 avoidable deaths in U.S. hospitals each year and estimated that 33,459 lives could be saved every year if “B,” “C,” ”D,” and “F” hospitals had the same safety performance as “A” hospitals.
Avoidable deaths can be due to any number of outcomes measures that are included in the Hospital Safety Score. For example, patients that contract a Catheter-Associated Blood Stream Infection (CLABSI) face an extremely high risk of death, as these infections are often fatal.
Mobley
“Multiple studies have shown that CLABSI is entirely preventable, and many hospitals have achieved a rate of 0 CLABSIs over a period of years,” says Erica Mobley, director of communications & development at The Leapfrog Group. “Patients can also die from falls, air embolisms, or complications from a foreign object retained after surgery.”
Problems with patient safety are a major hazard to the life, health, and well being of covered enrollees, and costly, Binder says. She points to study in JAMA that found that commercial insurance paid $39,000 extra on average every time there was a surgical site infection at a hospital system in the South, and Leapfrog’s evidence-based calculator suggests that employers pay about $8,100 extra for every admission.
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