Hospitals Making Gains on Joint Commission Safety Goals, But Performance Varies

The Joint Commission’s annual report on hospital quality and safety suggests there have been improvements over the last six years.  These findings are based on hospital compliance with the Joint Commission’s National Patient Safety Goals, as well as compliance with processes associated with better outcomes for heart failure, pneumonia and certain surgical conditions. 

 

Many more hospitals, for example, are providing smoking cessation counseling when warranted.  Hospitals provided such advice to heart attack patients 98.2 percent of the time in 2007 compared with 66.6 percent in 2002.  There were even more substantial gains in smoking cessation counseling for heart attach and pneumonia patients.

Over the same six year period, hospitals also got better at 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%).

 

However, performance across hospitals varies tremendously.  For example, hospitals provided discharge instructions to heart failure patients on average 92.1 percent of the time in the highest performing state, but only 56.5 percent of the time in the lowest performing state.

 

For a complete copy of the report, visit the Joint Commission web site.