The Department of Health (DOH) today released New Jersey's annual Hospital Performance Report which demonstrates that hospital quality continues to improve in the state. The report includes two new measures and also identifies opportunities for hospitals to continue to enhance their performance.
"New Jersey hospitals are showing steady progress in advancing quality of care with improved scores on the majority of measures placing our state in the top quartile nationally in health care quality," said DOH Commissioner Mary E. O'Dowd. "The report is a tool for hospitals to see where they need to improve and gives patients information to help them make more informed health decisions."
The report scores hospitals in three general categories: Recommended Care, Patient Safety, and Healthcare-Associated Infections.
· Recommended Care Measures show how often each hospital provides the recommended treatment eligible patients with four common conditions: heart attack, pneumonia, heart failure and patients having surgery.
· Patient Safety Indicators help hospitals identify potentially preventable adverse events or serious medical errors and implement corrective steps.
· Healthcare-Associated Infections show how well hospitals are providing safe care by comparing hospital Healthcare-Associated Infection experience with the national experience and giving hospitals information to reduce these preventable infections and improve patient safety.
The Department also added two measures to this year's report. Under Recommended Care Measures, Perioperative Temperature Management was included to illustrate the percent of patients whose body temperature was normal before or after anesthesia. This information is important because temperatures that fall below normal present a risk for patients undergoing surgery. Another measure, added under Healthcare-Associated Infections, was Surgical Site Infection following knee replacement surgery.
In addition to quality data, the report also offers consumer advice on taking an active role in healthcare, including how to manage medications and questions to ask health care providers.
Recommended Care Measures for Specific Health Conditions
This section scores hospitals on how often they provide certain patients with a specific treatment that is nationally recognized as a best practice. Heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia and care of surgical patients are scored on 26 measures. These include practices such as giving heart attack patients aspirin on arrival at the hospital to help reduce the severity of the attack. Here are some report highlights:
· Of the 26 recommended care measures, New Jersey exceeded national scores on 17 measures compared to 15 last year.
· New Jersey hospital performance was equal to national norms on eight measures.
· Only one measure, PCI received within 90 minutes for heart attack patients - a procedure to open blocked blood vessels - fell below national average (91 vs. 94). However, hospital performance on this measure improved 2.2%, rising to 91% in 2011 from 89% in 2010.
Patient Safety
The report also compares hospitals on 12 measures called Patient Safety Indicators (PSI). This section shows how well each hospital is providing safe patient care by examining the number of medical complications that occur during hospitalization, medical procedures and child birth.
Highlights include:
· New Jersey performed better or the same in 11 of the 12 PSI indicators in 2011 compared to 2010.
· On seven of the comparable 10 PSIs New Jersey outperformed the nation.
· New Jersey lagged the national average on three indicators: post-operative bleeding or blood clot, post-operative bloodstream infections and hip fractures following surgery.
Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAIs)
HAIs are infections patients get while in a hospital or healthcare facility. The goal of reporting HAIs is to provide consumers with information and to encourage hospitals to prevent these serious infections. Nationally, HAIs account for approximately 1.7 million infections and almost 100,000 deaths annually. The estimated financial impact of these infections is between $28 billion and $33 billion a year.
The results for these HAIs are as follows:
· Central Line-Associated Bloodstream Infections were lower than central-line infections seen nationally with 27% infections fewer than expected.
· Coronary Artery Bypass Graft infections, Abdominal Hysterectomy infections, Knee replacement infections and Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract infections were similar to the ratios of these infections seen nationally.
· The greatest reduction among HAIs was in abdominal hysterectomy infections, which had 33% reduction in infections in one year.
· New Jersey hospitals performed better than last year's report on all measures except for Coronary Artery Bypass Graft infections.
The report is available at www.nj.gov/health/hpr.
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