It's not just about information technology or the cost of delivering care, but those two factors play a role in a complex formula that technology company Thompson Healthcare uses to measure the top 100 performing hospitals on patient safety.
The company released a new study Monday which reveals improvement on a composite of eight patient safety measures affecting Medicare patients treated in U.S. hospitals from 2001 through 2005.
The highest performance levels in patient safety were achieved by the 100 hospitals in the study that delivered the highest balanced performance across quality, efficiency and financial stability, according to the study. If all hospitals had performed at the level of these leading hospitals on the eight patient safety measures, they would have saved $253 million and 7,914 lives during that time period, the study concluded.
"Employers, health plans and hospitals need to take note that we have entered a new phase in driving transformation of the healthcare industry," said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president in the Center for Healthcare Improvement at Thomson Healthcare. "Hospitals setting new levels of patient safety are those with the highest balanced scores across quality, efficiency and financial performance - suggesting that payers that focus narrowly on cost alone, or any other single area of performance, are less likely to achieve the highest levels of improvement. Employers and payers need sophisticated, collaborative approaches to drive higher value from their hospital networks."
The study, "Trends in Patient Safety Adverse Outcomes and 100 Top Hospitals Performance 2000-2005," examined changes in patient safety scores in Medicare populations for eight patient safety indicators established by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
"Improvement was demonstrated in three separate hospital groups: the 100 highest performers on the Thomson balanced scorecard, 100 hospitals that improved the fastest on the Thomson balanced scorecard, and all other peer hospitals," said David A. Foster, chief scientist at Thomson Healthcare and author of the study.
The study ranks hospitals based on their performance in risk-adjusted mortality, risk-adjusted complications, patient safety composite, average core measures scores, severity-adjusted average length of stay, expense per adjusted discharge, profit from operations and cash-to-debt ratio.