About Quality Data
Patients Deserve The Best Care.
Hospitals are working hard to ensure patients in our communities receive safe care. Using outcome data for selected measures, Focus on Hospitals can help you make an informed decision about your health care choices through the public reporting of quality performance metrics.
Improving the quality of care in our communities requires a significant commitment by an organization and its employees. While the health care environment changes frequently, providing quality care to patients continues to remain a priority to our hospitals and health care leaders. Like any long-term focus, there will be challenges and opportunities. Together, hospitals and MHA are tackling those challenges and reducing variation in providing safe care throughout the state.
The quality and patient safety outcomes listed on this website represent only a sample of conditions that patients face throughout their health care experience. As you review this information, it is important to remember that individual patients have different needs and hospitals have different strengths.
The measures that are included on this website are all outcomes from a hospital’s discharge data or abstracted from their patient records. Each of the topics chosen follows national standards from organizations such as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the National Healthcare Safety Network and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. We will continue to assess measures to ensure hospitals remain current with national trends.
A readmission is when a patient has to return to the hospital as an inpatient within 30 days of being discharged from an inpatient stay. A second stay is inconvenient and costly for the patient and their family. Readmissions comprise nearly one-third of the amount spent on health care in the U.S. (Annual Report, April 2014).
Hospitals recognize the burden that a readmission to the hospital places on the communities we serve; therefore, hospitals have been working diligently to reduce this costly and often avoidable issue. Since January 2012, Missouri hospitals participating in an engagement network reduced their readmission rate by 4.9 percent (Annual Report, April 2014). Keeping a patient healthy and out of the hospital is not always an easy task, so MHA is encouraging hospitals to work with other health care providers and local resources in their communities to provide health care that meets all patients’ needs.
Hospital Compare is a great resource for readmission explanations and resources.
Providing safe, timely, effective, efficient, equitable and patient-centered care is a goal of each hospital in Missouri. We want our patients to receive the best care at all times. Some hospital stays, procedures or diagnoses can be more complicated than others. In those instances, hospitals and providers are tracking and focusing efforts on improving care.
Health care-associated infections can have a devastating effect on a patient’s emotional, financial and medical well-being. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention encourages patients to be active in their infection prevention and recommend six ways to be a safe patient. Hospitals participating in the Missouri Hospital Engagement Network went from March through June 2014 without any central-line bloodstream infections. Hospitals in Missouri also are working tirelessly on reducing surgical site infections. Those that participated in the HEN quality project reduced surgical site infections by 30 percent (Annual Report, April 2014).
Patients go to a hospital when they are sick and want to be healed. Unfortunately, sometimes harm occurs in the health care setting, just as it can at home. Hospitals are focused on preventing harm in their facilities and have taken an “all harm” approach, which means they monitor all types of harm for all types of patients. Thus far, efforts have been successful as Missouri hospitals that participated in the HEN reduced falls by 32 percent. Pressure ulcers also were reduced by 60 percent and blood clots by 45 percent.
Managing Readmissions
A readmission is when a patient has to return to the hospital as an inpatient within 30 days of being discharged from an inpatient stay. A second stay is inconvenient and costly for the patient and their family. Readmissions comprise nearly one-third of the amount spent on health care in the U.S. Hospitals recognize the burden that a readmission to the hospital places on the communities we serve; therefore, hospitals have been working diligently to reduce this costly and often avoidable issue. Since January 2012, Missouri hospitals participating in an engagement network reduced their readmission rate by 4.9 percent (Annual Report, April 2014). Keeping a patient healthy and out of the hospital is not always an easy task, so MHA is encouraging hospitals to work with other health care providers and local resources in their communities to provide health care that meets all patients’ needs.
Providing safe, timely, effective, efficient, equitable and patient-centered care is a goal of each hospital. We want our patients to receive the best care that they can at all times. Some hospital stays, procedures or diagnoses can be more complicated than others. In those instances, hospitals and providers are tracking and focusing efforts on improving care.
Preventing Infections
Health care-associated infections can have a devastating effect on a patient’s emotional, financial and medical well-being. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention encourages patients to be active in their infection prevention and recommend six ways to be a safe patient. Hospitals participating in the Missouri Hospital Engagement Network went from March through June 2014 without any central-line bloodstream infections. Hospitals also are working tirelessly on reducing surgical site infections. Those that participated in the HEN quality project reduced surgical site infections by 30 percent (Annual Report, April 2014).
Reducing Harm
Patients go to a hospital when they are sick and want to be healed. Unfortunately, sometimes harm occurs in the health care setting, just as it can at home. Hospitals are focused on preventing harm in their facilities and have taken an “all harm” approach, which means they monitor all types of harm for all types of patients. Thus far, efforts have been successful as Missouri hospitals that participated in the HEN reduced falls by 32 percent. Pressure ulcers also were reduced by 60 percent and blood clots by 45 percent.