Bookmark & Share

Favorites	Google
Digg	Del.icio.us
Twitter	Facebook

>> More...

As the recession continues to strain the health care sector, hospital administrators tackling patient-safety issues "are increasingly scrutinized on dollars-and-cents grounds," AMNews reports. At the National Patient Safety Foundation's Patient Safety Congress in May, hospital administrators emphasized the need to make a business case for patient safety, with many attending breakout sessions on the topic. Specifically, a speaker from the Department of Veterans Affairs' National Center for Patient Safety noted that administrators should search the literature for the best evidence on the effectiveness of their proposed safety initiatives and make conservative estimates regarding a project's effect in order to "underpromise and overdeliver." In addition, Alan Aviles, who is the chief executive officer of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corp. and delivered the congress' keynote address, said that making the business case for quality and safety initiatives can be a "complex calculation," because it must account for both fixed and variable costs. Building on the topic, presenters from the James H. Quillen VA Medical Center in Mountain Home, Tenn., discussed the use of a simple benefit-to-cost ratio to determine the value of investing in safety measures to reduce patient falls. Specifically, the calculation divided the savings the facility generated from five avoided hip fractures in one year by the cost of hip pads and floor cushions to determine that, for every $1 spent on prevention, the medical center saw a return of $4.31. While Aviles noted that the financial benefit of patient safety can be frustratingly equivocal, he added that the federal government will likely soon make much patient safety data public, which will directly affect hospitals' and physicians' competitive position. Already, hospitals are experiencing changes in the reimbursement landscape amid government interventions, including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' denial of reimbursement for never events. President Barack Obama has also proposed bundling payments for hospitalization and care 30 days post-discharge as a way to cut down on high readmission rates (O'Reilly, AMNews, 7/20/09).