When one person makes a mistake, there isn’t a good team ready to catch that mistake. Patients can experience dangerous complications, recovery is slower, and some patients even die unnecessarily. The chance of surviving any of four high-risk surgeries can vary by as much as 23% depending on what hospital patients use, according to an analysis released on 12th of March in US by nonprofit Leapfrog Group.In general, those that performed more procedures did best. Consumers will choose safer hospitals 97% of the time, and higher incomes, higher health literacy, and being female were associated with an even stronger preference for the safer hospital. For pancreatectomy, predicted survival rates ranged from 81% to 100%. Of 487 hospitals reporting data, 203 had rates of at least 91.3%, which Leapfrog chose as the benchmark for quality. For esophagectomy, expected survival ranged from 88% to 98%. Only 182 of 535 hospitals had rates of at least 91.7%. For repairs of abdominal aortic aneurysm, survival ranged from 86% to 99%; 268 of 792 hospitals met the benchmark of 97.3%. For aortic valve replacement, survival ranged from 92% to 97%; only 95 of 544 hospitals hit 95.6%.Furthermore, patients have a 1 in 25 chance of leaving the hospital with a new infection.
One of the most significant problems with today’s healthcare system is the failure to make safety and quality information available to the public. But the public deserves this information so they can make informed choices about where to receive care. The purpose of the Hospital Safety Score is to bring this information to light in a way that is easy for consumers to use. The hospital Safety Scores are assigned to more than 2,500 hospitals across the US twice annually. The Hospital Safety Score includes 28 measures, all currently in use by national measurement and reporting programs. Taken together, those performance measures produce a single score representing a hospital’s overall performance in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors. Score methodology has been peer reviewed and published in the Journal of Patient Safety.
Source:
http://www.hospitalsafetyscore.org/what-is-patient-safety/why-the-hospital-safety-score-works
http://www.hospitalsafetyscore.org/media/file/JournalofPatientSafety_HospitalSafetyScore.pdf