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A study found that certain hospitals are 69% more likely to kill a patient than those that provide “5-star” treatment.
The ninth annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America Study, also found that the gap in care quality between the best and worst hospitals grew by about 5 percent in the past year.
HealthGrades, the independent health care rating group that conducted the study, assessed the care quality of more than 5,000 hospitals by analyzing more than 40 million Medicare hospital records from between 2003 and 2005.
The report assigned each hospital a one, three, or five-star rating (“worst”, “as expected,” and “best,” respectively) based on the outcomes of specific procedures, including incidence of death and serious complications.
The Findings
“Across 28 conditions, like heart failure and heart attack, and procedures like bypass surgery, knee replacements, etc., there is a large variation between hospitals,” concluded Dr. Samantha Collier, vice president of medical affairs at HealthGrades, and the report’s author. “Some of these differences can be quite large – up to 90 percent.”
The study projects that if all Medicare hospitals gave 5-star quality care, 302,403 patients’ lives could have been saved from 2003 to 2005.
The study also found that about half of all preventable hospital deaths were associated with just four ailments: heart failure, community-acquired pneumonia, blood infection, or respiratory failure.
For example, a coronary bypass surgery is 72.9 percent more likely to kill the patient at a 1-star hospital than the same procedure at a 5-star hospital. If the 1-star hospitals operated with the same success as the 5-star hospitals, 5,308 coronary bypass surgery patients’ lives would have been saved, the report said.
Moreover, the discrepancies in care quality are growing. Over those three years, the 5-star hospitals demonstrated an increase in care quality of almost 20 percent higher than 3-star hospitals, and 57 percent higher than 1-star facilities.
Collier said there are many reasons for these variances in care quality. One problem is that hospital management systems often don’t adequately track and record patients and treatments. Understaffing, and the use of doctors unskilled in certain procedures are also contributors, she said.
If you or a loved one has been seriously injured or killed by substandard medical care, please contact us today for a FREE consultation with a caring and experienced medical malpractice attorney who can thoroughly examine your case and get you the compensation you may be entitled to.
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