USA: Against the odds, hospitals are getting safer

Hospitals are performing better on quality and safety metrics than they did pre-pandemic, despite seeing sicker patients—and more of them.

That's according to a new report from the American Hospital Association and Vizient, a health care performance improvement company. The organisations analysed data from Vizient's Clinical Data Base, which contains information from more than 1,300 hospitals and collects data on more than 10 million inpatients and 180 million outpatients each year.

In the first quarter of this year, hospitalised patients—despite facing more acute, complex health issues—had a survival rate over 20 percent higher than anticipated based on the severity of their conditions compared to the fourth quarter of 2019, per the report.

Between April 2023 and March 2024, the analysis found 200,000 patients who survived health episodes that likely would have been fatal in 2019. Mortality rates and hospital-acquired conditions, including central line-associated bloodstream infections and catheter-associated urinary tract infections, have decreased over the past five years.

The report comes at an interesting time, as hospitals are entering a "new era of 'normal' operations" in the wake of COVID-19, Dr. David Levine, chief medical officer at Vizient, told Newsweek.

"This study allowed us to show that things are back on track," Levine said. "Not to say we're anywhere near declaring victory, but that improvement that was going on before 2019 has regained its momentum."

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Source: Newsweek, 10 October 2024