In updating its data on efforts to reduce hospital-acquired infections, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality reported that there was no decrease in nosocomial conditions among Medicare patients in 2014 after strong progress in the preceding three years.
The national rate of HAIs was at 121 per 1,000 discharges in 2014, according to interim data released Tuesday. While that is 17 percent below the baseline of 145 from when the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, it represents no change from 2013.
“That rate is still too high,” AHRQ said in its report.
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By sheer numbers, safety efforts in hospitals nationwide resulted in the prevention of 790,000 HAIs in 2014, AHRQ reported, based on extrapolation of data from the Medicare Patient Safety Monitoring System, the National Healthcare Safety Network and the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project. That is down from 799,800 in 2013 but far ahead of the 98,000 hospital-acquired conditions prevented in 2011, the first year Medicare started penalizing hospitals under the ACA for certain preventable readmissions.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which includes AHRQ, put a positive spin on the results by focusing on the cumulative numbers since 2010. In the four-year period tracked, hospitals prevented slightly more than 2.1 million adverse conditions, saved 86,669 lives and reduced costs by $19.8 billion, AHRQ reported.
“These results demonstrate that it’s possible to improve national patient safety performance resulting in millions of people avoiding infections and adverse events. As a practicing physician, I know the importance of safety culture and care teams focused on keeping every patient as safe as possible,” Dr. Patrick Conway, CMO and deputy administrator for innovation and quality at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in a rosy press release.
Slightly more than half the HAI prevention cost savings came from averting bloodstream infections related to central lines, as did nearly half of the deaths avoided. More adverse drug events were prevented than any other category of nosocomial condition in the four-year study period, however.
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Images: Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality, Bigstock
