OAKBROOK TERRACE, IL – Accredited hospitals in the United States have steadily improved the quality of patient care over a seven-year period, saving lives and improving the health of thousands of patients, according to The Joint Commission’s annual report.

“Improving America’s Hospitals: The Joint Commission’s Report on Quality and Safety 2009” provides evidence of improvements in the care of patients with heart attacks, heart failure, pneumonia and surgical conditions.

According to the report, since being introduced as core measures in 2002, pneumococcal vaccination and smoking cessation advice measures have demonstrated the greatest rates of improvement.

“In addition to saving lives and improving health, improved quality reduces healthcare costs by eliminating preventable complications,” said Mark R. Chassin, MD, president of The Joint Commission, based in Oakbrook Terrace, Ill. “Quality improvement is an important aspect of the ongoing reform effort to make healthcare accessible to more Americans and ‘bend the curve’ on increasing costs.”

By eliminating preventable complications that drive up the cost of care, the nation could save billions of dollars, he said.

The fourth annual report shows continual improvement between 2002 and 2008 on 12 quality measures reflecting the best evidence-based treatments for heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia. The magnitude of national improvement on these measures ranged from 4.9 percent to 58.8 percent. Hospital performance also improved on 13 other measures.

More than 3,000 Joint Commission-accredited hospitals contributed data that show:

• After one year of measurement, there was 99.8 percent performance on providing “relievers” to childhood asthma inpatients and 99.1 percent performance on providing systematic corticosteroids to childhood asthma inpatients.
• The overall heart attack care result improved to 96.7 percent in 2008 from 86.9 percent in 2002.
• The overall heart failure care result improved to 91.6 percent, up from 59.7 percent in 2002, an improvement of 31.9 percent.
• The overall 2008 pneumonia care result is 92.9 percent, up from 72.3 percent in 2002.

Even with the improvements of the past seven years, the report makes clear that more is needed. Variability is also still present in the level of quality of patient care, it said.

“The data in this report show steady improvement over time on vitally important measures of quality,” said  Chassin. “Furthermore, with more than 95 percent of hospitals now exceeding 90 percent performance on some measures, we are beginning to see the kind of consistent excellence to which we aspire for all of healthcare.”