American hospitals are making measurable strides in the quality of care provided for patients with heart attacks, heart failure, pneumonia, and surgical conditions, according to the Joint Commission’s second annual report on healthcare quality and patient safety in the nation’s hospitals. The detailed report portrays the aggregate performance of accredited hospitals against the Joint Commission’s standardized national performance measures and its National Patient Safety Goals.
Improving America’s Hospitals: The Joint Commission’s Annual Report on Quality and Safety 2007 also shows, however, that whether or not patients receive proven treatments for these common reasons for hospitalization often depends on where they live. For example, statewide performance of hospitals on the measure of providing discharge instructions to patients with heart failure ranges from 49 percent to 91 percent.
Among the specific findings, hospitals demonstrated 90 percent or higher compliance with 10 of 16 National Patient Safety Goal requirements that address issues such as medication safety, caregiver communication, and preventing patient falls. However, noncompliance rates for six of those 16 requirements range between 16 percent and 37 percent. Also, significant variability exists in the performance of hospitals by state, as well as between the highest- and lowest-performing hospitals. For example, on the measure of providing pneumococcal vaccination, performance ranged from 55.5 percent to 91 percent. On specific measures of surgical care, the difference between the highest state rate and the lowest state rate ranged as high as 80 percent.
