AJMQ: Patient safety programs work

Patient safety programs help hospitals ward off infections—and save money. Those are among the conclusions reached by researchers at the Johns Hospkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who found that one patient safety program in Michigan resulted in savings of as much as $53,000 per infection averted, according to a cost-effective analysis published in the September issue of the American Journal of Medical Quality.

Hugh R. Waters, MD, PhD, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, and colleagues assessed the costs and benefits of a patient-safety program in intensive care units (ICUs) in six hospitals that were part of the Michigan Keystone ICU Patient Safety Program.

“The average cost of the intervention is $3,375 per infection averted, measured in 2007 dollars. The cost of the intervention is substantially less than estimates of the additional healthcare costs associated with these infections, which range from $12,208 to $56,167 per infection episode,” wrote Waters et al.

Healthcare-associated infections—which include surgical site infections, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, central line-associate blood stream infections (CLABSIs), among others—affect an estimated 5 percent of hospitalized patients and represent one of the leading causes of illness and death in the U.S. The Michigan Keystone ICU Patient Safety Program averted an average of 29.9 catheter-related bloodstream infections and 18 cases of ventilator associated pneumonia (VAP) annually, according to the study.

“The health and economic impacts of these infections are extensive. Estimates of the total financial burden related to hospital acquired infections (HAIs) in the United States range from $4.5 to $45 billion annually,” wrote Waters et al.

The Michigan ICU Patient Safety Program was based on the Johns Hopkins Quality and Safety Research Group improvement program and included two key components: a comprehensive unit-based safety program—which included interventions in safety culture, teamwork and communications—and specific interventions to improve compliance with evidence-based care to reduce CLABSIs and VAP.