Healthcare Quality News

Hospitals accredited by The Joint Commission (TJC) continue to improve quality of patient care, according to Improving America’s Hospitals: The Joint Commission’s Annual Report on Quality and Safety 2009.

Key Findings:

• Hospitals accredited by The Joint Commission have significantly improved the quality of care provided to heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia patients over a seven-year period.
• Hospitals have steadily improved on individual surgical care performance measures
• Hospital performance on two individual measures of quality relating to inpatient care for childhood asthma is excellent after only one year of measurement.
• Where a patient receives care makes a difference. Some hospitals perform better than others in treating particular conditions and in achieving patient satisfaction.

While these findings are promising, improvement is still needed in some areas, including providing fibrinolytic therapy within 30 minutes of arrival to heart attack patients and providing antibiotics to intensive care unit pneumonia patients within 24 hours of arrival.

(SOURCES: The Joint Commission’s Annual Report on Quality and Safety, http://jointcommision.org, 2009; Advisory Board Daily Briefing, http://advisory.com, January 15, 2010)