Hospitals Report on Safety Goals
By Scott Culver
Communications Specialist
WEA Trust
November 2003
| Resources Hospital ratings
To see the ratings for the urban hospitals in Wisconsin that have
reported their progress on meeting these three patient safety
standards, or “leaps,” visit one of these site: Patient safety resources - The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ): www.ahrq.gov.
• The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare
Organiza-tions (JCAHO): www.jcaho.org
• National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF): www.npsf.org |
We assume hospital care should be safe – yet as many as 98,000
Americans die in hospitals each year because of preventable medical
mistakes, according to a 1999 Institute of Medicine report.
Beyond the unnecessary human toll, a study by the Midwest Business
Group on Health estimates the cost of poor quality to be up to one-third
of every dollar spent on health care.
The WEA Trust is committed to supporting health care quality improvement
efforts and giving Trust health plan members information to make decisions
about health care. The Trust is one of more than 140 health plan sponsors
nationwide that belong to The Leapfrog Group, an organization founded
to trigger improvements in the quality of health care.
New information to help consumers assess the safety and quality of
urban hospital care is now available online from Leapfrog. It shows
the progress urban hospitals are making on three standards proven to
reduce medical errors and save lives:
- Computerized drug orders: Physicians enter patient prescriptions
and other orders into computers linked to error-prevention software.
- Intensive care unit (ICU) staffing: Studies show that patients
in ICUs have higher survival rates if they are treated by physicians
specially trained in critical care medicine.
- High-risk treatments: Patients undergoing certain high-risk treatments
increase their chances of survival if they are treated by hospitals
that perform these procedures more often and follow proven processes
of caring for patients.
About 60,000 hospital deaths and half a million serious medication
errors caused by preventable mistakes could be avoided each year if
urban hospitals nationwide implemented these standards, saving the U.S.
health care system $9.7 billion annually, according to the Leapfrog
Group.
What can you do?
Tell your health care provider that you want information on quality
to make choices. Your doctor and hospital need to know that this information
is important to you and that you will use it. If your hospital is not
listed on the Leapfrog Group Web site, ask about what practices are
in place to ensure your safety.
Posted November 10, 2003