Report Shows Hospital-Acquired Conditions Continue to Decline

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has released a preliminary update to the National Scorecard on Rates of Hospital-Acquired Conditions that show a 21 percent reduction in hospital-acquired conditions from 2010 to 2015. This means nearly 125,000 fewer patients died, more than three million adverse events were avoided, and more than $28 billion in healthcare costs were saved.

Many of the hospital-acquired conditions, such as adverse drug events, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, central line-associated bloodstream infections, surgical site infections and ventilator-associated pneumonias, are priorities in the National Action Plan for Adverse Drug Event Prevention and the National Action Plan to Prevent Health Care-Associated Infections. Both plans highlight the importance of coordinating surveillance resources to gather more accurate and timely data, sharing tools to help with implementing evidence-based recommendations, creating incentives to drive high-quality care and facilitating research to understand better prevention strategies.