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FRIDAY, May 17, 2019 (HealthDay News) — More than 50,000 lives could be saved if all hospitals had an avoidable death rate equivalent to “A” grade hospitals, according to an updated report prepared for The Leapfrog Institute.<\/p>\n
Matt Austin, Ph.D., and Jordan Derk, M.P.H., from the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, assigned hospitals a safety letter grade ranging from A to F, with A hospitals having the highest score. The mortality rate for each of 15 patient safety outcomes in hospitals in each letter grade was estimated.<\/p>\n
The authors found that the number of avoidable deaths per 1,000 admissions varied from 3.24 lives in A hospitals to 6.21 lives in D and F hospitals. The differences in the estimated relative risk for an avoidable death were 34.9 percent higher in B hospitals, 87.7 percent higher in C hospitals, and 91.8 percent higher in D and F hospitals relative to A hospitals. If B, C, D, and F hospitals had the same safety performance as A hospitals, an estimated 50,215 lives could be saved every year.<\/p>\n
“Efforts to reduce patient safety events have been plentiful, and yet elimination of all preventable harms remains elusive,” the authors write. “While hospitals with a Hospital Safety Grade of ‘A’ have better performance than hospitals with lower grades, they still have significant opportunities for improvement.”<\/p>\n