Analysis: Hospital safety, quality measures surpass pre-pandemic levels

Editor's Note

An American Hospital Association (AHA) analysis of data from Vizient reveals that hospital performance levels in the first quarter of this year was on par with performance prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, despite patients exhibiting more significant healthcare needs.

Released this month, the report analyzes data from 2019 through this year from 715 general acute hospitals. It concludes that hospital safety efforts resulted in 200,000 hospitalized Americans surviving episodes of care between April 2023 and March 2024 that they would not have survived in 2019.

“Hospitals across the country achieved success in improving key markers that measure patient safety, including reducing infections, expediting the diagnosis and provision of lifesaving treatments for heart attack and stroke, and preventing unnecessary readmissions,” the report reads. “Unsurprisingly, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted that progress. However, new data analyses show not only a rebound but an improvement on pre-pandemic performance in patient safety.”

Other takeaways of comparisons between 2019 and 2024 data include:

• Compared to 2019, hospitalized patients were more than 20% more likely to survive in 2024
• Hospitals cared for more patients with more complex needs in 2024
• Central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI) and catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI) dropped   
• Breast, colon and cervical cancer screenings increased by 60 to 80 percent