Hospital Performance on Patient Safety Measures Varies Widely Across the Nation
Midwest Leads While New York and California Lag
EVANSTON, IL — February 28, 2005 — Patient safety at hospitals
varies dramatically across the nation, but the highest performance on
patient safety is centered in the Midwestern states, not the most populous
states on the coasts, according to new findings by Solucient.
Eleven out of 12 states in the Midwestern region (90 percent) were ranked
highest in terms of patient safety, including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana,
and Ohio. New York, New Jersey, Nevada and California were ranked among
the poorest performing states in patient safety.
These findings are part of the Solucient 100 Top Hospitals®: National
Benchmarks for Success, 12th Edition study, which included patient safety
as a measurement for the first time.
"The ability to improve patient safety is crucial as hospitals are
increasingly affected by pay for performance and are responding to consumer
pressure to publicly report how they perform," says Jean Chenoweth,
senior vice president of Solucient's Center for Healthcare Improvement,
which is responsible for the 100 Top Hospitals program of Solucient.
"Wide variation in performance is not unusual when you are measuring
it for the first time," she adds, "but the strength of the
Midwest compared to highly populated states like California and New York
is certainly interesting. By measuring patient safety for the first time,
Solucient is establishing a baseline from which to compare hospitals in
the future."
Solucient's 100 Top Hospitals patient safety index was calculated
using patient safety indicators developed by the Agency for Healthcare
Research and Quality (AHRQ), including post-operative complications (like
bleeding, hip fracture and respiratory failure), infection rates, and
other measures of patient safety. The data was collected in 2002 and 2003.
States were then ranked and grouped into quintiles based on their overall
patient safety performance, with states in quintiles one and two ranked
the best in terms of patient safety.
"What we would like to see are uniformly high performance measurements
on patient safety at all hospitals across the nation," says David
Foster, Ph.D., vice president of clinical informatics at Solucient. "The
fact that there is so much regional variation indicates that there are
opportunities for improvement. If all regions of the U.S. were performing
as well as the Midwest, we would expect to see more patients' lives
saved, more complications avoided, fewer days of stay, and lower costs
per case in those regions."
The West and South showed the weakest performance, with more than half
the states in both regions in the bottom two quintiles on patient safety,
and less than a quarter of their states in the top two quintiles.
"There are a number of possible reasons why the Midwestern states
are doing so much better than California and New York, one of which may
be the focus of healthcare leaders in the Midwest on both performance
improvement and public reporting of performance," says Chenoweth.
"For example, in Wisconsin, a large group of hospitals initiated
the development and reporting of measures of hospital quality directly
to the public."
"It is encouraging that patient safety is being increasingly measured
and publicly reported, but there's a long way to go among the industry
as a whole in this area," says Chenoweth.
About Solucient
Solucient® is an information products company serving the healthcare industry.
It is the market leader in providing tools and vital insights that healthcare
managers use to improve the performance of their organizations.
By integrating, standardizing and enhancing healthcare information, Solucient
provides comparative measurements of cost, quality and market performance.
Solucient's expertise and proven solutions enable providers, payers and
pharmaceutical companies to drive business growth, manage costs and deliver
high quality care. For more information, visit www.solucient.com.
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