Joint Commission report shows gains in safety
Like most risk managers, you've probably been pushing extra hard to improve safety over the last few years, and The Joint Commission says all the hard work is paying off.
Hospitals have steadily improved the quality of patient care over a six-year period, saving lives and improving the health of thousands of patients, according a recent Joint Commission report. The data come from Improving America's Hospitals: The Joint Commission's Report on Quality and Safety 2008, an analysis of National Patient Safety Goal compliance and hospital quality measures related to heart attacks, heart failure, pneumonia, or surgical conditions, provides scientific evidence of improved patient care.
There were some dramatic improvements over the six-year period of data collection, especially in providing smoking cessation advice. For example, hospitals provided this advice to 98.2% of heart attack patients in 2007 compared with 66.6% in 2002. Hospitals greatly improved their results from 2002 to 2007 in providing this advice to heart failure patients (from 42.2% in 2002 to 95.7% in 2007) and patients with pneumonia (from 37.2% to 93.7%). Other strong improvements included providing discharge instructions to heart failure patients (from 30.9% to 77.5%) and providing pneumococcal screening and vaccination to pneumonia patients (from 30.2% to 83.9%).
Like most risk managers, you've probably been pushing extra hard to improve safety over the last few years, and The Joint Commission says all the hard work is paying off.You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
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