A larger number of hospitals are showing improvements in their quality of care said the Joint Commission in its annual report on quality and safety of hospitals.
Last week during a webcast detailing the results of its annual report, the Joint Commission said 1,099 Joint Commission-accredited hospitals were named in its report as Top Performer on Key Quality Measures hospitals, representing a 77 percent increase from last year.
[See also: Joint Commission annual report names 620 top performing hospitals]
Of those 1,099 top performers, 424 organizations have achieved the distinction for two years in a row and 182 have achieved it every year since the program’s inception in 2011.
According to the report, the Joint Commission bases its top performing designation on a hospital’s accountability measures for heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, surgical care, children’s asthma care, inpatient psychiatric services, venous thromboembolism care, stroke care and immunization.
The top-performing hospitals must provide data on four measure sets, achieve a 95 percent performance or above for all the reported accountability measures and score at least a 95 percent in the reported accountability measures with at least 30 cases.
"By tracking the data found in each year’s edition of this report, you can see how results considered outstanding several years ago are now achieved by almost every Joint Commission-accredited hospital in America today,” said Mark R. Chassin, president and CEO of The Joint Commission, during the webcast. “More than half of Joint Commission-accredited hospitals have reached or have nearly reached Top Performer distinction, showing that we are approaching a time in which consistent excellence in hospital performance on these important quality measures is the new normal. This means patients are getting better care thanks to the shared commitment by hospitals to using data and proven quality improvement methods to always do the right thing and improve quality and safety."
[See also: Joint Commission names top performing hospitals]
Next year, the Joint Commission hopes to further improve hospital performance by increasing the required number of selected core measure sets for which a hospital must submit data from four to six. This will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2014, according to the report.
[See also: Joint Commission report shows gains in safety, quality]