Joint Commission reports improvements in hospital safety, quality

Patient care at Joint Commission-accredited hospitals improved in 2015, according to the group’s annual hospital safety and quality report.

The positive results came after significant changes to performance measurement. The Joint Commission retired 20 quality measures where hospitals consistently scored highly while also accepting electronic clinical quality measures for the first time.

The 3,300 hospitals were judge on 24 accountability measures within six sets: inpatient psychiatric services, venous thromboembolism (VTE) care, stroke care, perinatal care, tobacco use treatment and substance use care, which saw the greatest improvement.  

In all six sets, composite scores either improved or remained flat from 2014:

• Inpatient psychiatric services: 90.3 percent, up from 89.9 percent
• VTE care: 95.2 percent, up from 94.6 percent
• Stroke care: 97.7 percent, same as 2014
• Perinatal care: 97.6 percent, up from 96.3 percent
• Tobacco use treatment: 84.2 percent, up from 75.8 percent
• Substance use care: 77.5 percent, up from 58.2 percent

“The results featured in The Joint Commission’s 2016 Annual Report are important because they show that accredited hospitals have continued to improve the quality of the care they provide, and the data that hospitals collect help them identify opportunities for further improvement,” Joint Commission President and CEO Mark R. Chassin, MD, MPP, MPH, said in a statement.

Because of the dropped quality measures, the percentage of hospitals achieving overall composite rates of 95 percent or greater in the accountability sets fell to 61 percent in 2015 from 80.3 percent the year before.

The report doesn’t include a list of top performers, as the Joint Commission decided to take a hiatus from that program to “address new quality improvement challenges.” But 39 hospitals were recognized as “Pioneers in Quality” for their efforts in electronic quality measure reporting.

Six hospitals were recognized as “expert contributors” for “advancing the evolution and utilization of electronic clinical quality measures” through efforts like presenting a quality webinar or participating in quality measure development during the past year:

• MedStar Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, D.C.
• SSM Good Samaritan Regional Health Center, Mt. Vernon, Ill.
• Nebraska Methodist Hospital, Omaha, Neb.
• Orange Regional Medical Center, Middletown, N.Y.
• Atrium Medical Center, Middletown, Ohio
• Harborview Medical Center, Seattle, Wash.