The American Hospital Association (AHA) announced in a September 12 report Press release the publication of its new report, Hospitals improve performance on key patient safety measures beyond pre-pandemic levels. The AHA found that hospitals and health systems performed better on key quality and patient safety measures in the first quarter of 2024 than before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Data analysis by Visientea group purchasing organization, show that health systems recovered and improved after the COVID-19 pandemic, when advances in safety measures were interrupted.
A key finding of the report indicated that hospitals served more patients in the first quarter of 2024 than in the last quarter of 2019, providing care to a more complex patient population.
“Despite being sicker and more complex, patients hospitalized in the first quarter of 2024 were on average more than 20 percent more likely to survive than expected, given the severity of their illnesses compared to the fourth quarter of 2019,” the report states.
Additionally, “hospitals’ efforts to improve safety led to 200,000 Americans hospitalized between April 2023 and March 2024 surviving episodes of care that they would not have in 2019.” Continued improvements in preventive health have led to a 60 to 80 percent increase in screening for breast, colon, and cervical cancer.
Vizient provided analysis of risk-adjusted data from 715 acute care hospitals in 49 states and the District of Columbia.
