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People come to 100 SafeCare Hospitals to connect with great hospitals. This site is a consumer-oriented service that can help health consumers make informed decisions about their healthcare.
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100 SafeCare Hospitals® - Since 2013
The Truth about U.S.A. Healthcare Performance
The Commonwealth Fund published in its 2022 "Mirror, Mirror" article that USA healthcare ranked dead last when compared to 11 other developed nations. The USA last place was in many key health measures including: medical cost, access to care, medical errors, preventable hospital admissions, and maternal mortality.
The Truth about U.S.A. Hospitals Performance
The Commonwealth Fund published in its 2022 "Mirror, Mirror" article that USA healthcare ranked dead last when compared to 11 other developed nations. The USA ranked last place in many key health measures including: cost, access to care, medical errors from procedure, preventable hospital admissions, and maternal mortality.
Hospital Charges
America is facing a
health care affordability crisis. Overpriced healthcare is the reason six
million Americans went without needed medical care, and medical debt is the
number one cause for USA bankruptcies. On average, Americans spend
significantly more on medical expenses annually compared to citizens in other
countries. In 2021, the average American spent nearly $13,000 on healthcare,
the highest worldwide, while Europeans spent less than half that amount.
Since 2021, federal law has required hospitals to publicly post information about their standard prices and negotiated discount rates for common health services to encourage consumers to compare prices and to promote competition. As of today, transparency data currently shared by hospitals to comply with the law are messy, inconsistent and confusing. It is indeed challenging, if not impossible, for patients to use the data to shop and compare prices across hospitals and estimate the cost of care before going to the hospital.
Americans are burdened with long wait times in emergency departments (ED), waiting hours upon hours and sometimes day, to be seen. Often times, patients often leave the EDs before clinical evaluation (left without being seen) when EDs are crowded and wait times are long. These departures may have significant consequences for patients given the associated delayed or deferred care for acute conditions.
Research has shown that the timelier the care, the better the patients' health results. Conversely, waiting for care in the ED can reduce the quality of care and increase risks and discomfort for patients with serious illnesses or injuries. On average, 2% of patients leave without being seen, and the worst hospitals have over 10% of patients leaving.
Medical errors are serious mistakes known as hospital acquired complications (HACs) that injure patients following initial hospital admission. Most commonly, these errors and the injuries accompanying them are caused by issues resulting as side effects from primary treatments and procedures. Hospitals can often prevent most medical errors by following best practices for treating patients.
13% of hospital admissions are associated with medical errors that seriously harm patients. The medical errors score is based on how often adult patients had certain serious, but potentially preventable, complications related to medical care, surgeries, procedures, and childbirth. These medical errors include: heart attack, pneumonia, sepsis/septicemia/shock, surgical site bleeding, pulmonary embolism, mechanical complications or death.
A hospital readmission occurs when a patient is discharged from the hospital and then admitted back into the hospital within a short period of time. A high rate of readmissions may indicate inadequate quality of care in the hospital and/or a lack of appropriate post-discharge planning and care coordination.
Readmissions are associated with increased deaths and higher health care costs. Hospital readmissions are frequent, harmful and costly - 2.3 million patients annually, are re-hospitalized within 30 days after discharge. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, a nonpartisan legislative branch agency, reported that about 75 % of such readmissions can and should be avoided.
Today’s healthcare employs many types of invasive devices and procedures to treat patients and to help them recover. Hospital acquired infections (HAIs) are infections people get while they are receiving health care for another condition. Infections can be associated with the devices used in medical procedures, such as catheters or ventilators.
Approximately 1 of every 25 hospitalized patients in the United States has a hospital infection, meaning that nearly 650,000 patients contract one of these infections each year during the course of their treatment. The infections measures apply to all patients treated in hospitals, including adult, pediatric, neonatal, and geriatric. The infections occurred in intensive care units (ICUs), neonatal ICUs, and medical, surgical, and medical/surgical ward locations.
Poor Hospital Performance
Mediocre performance of USA healthcare stems from (at best) mediocre performance of USA hospitals. Despite spending far more on healthcare than other high-income nations, the USA scored poorly on many key hospital measures including: preventable hospital admissions, postoperative complications, and maternal mortality. Each year, millions of patients are affected from shabby care, bad treatments, and poor services from healthcare providers. Poor hospital performance is intricately tied to:
§ Outdated hospital accreditation methods;
§ Unpoliced GPO anticompetitive business practices;
§ Lack of hospital systems executive accountability;
§ Ineffective CMS pay-for-performance programs;
§ Overabundance of defensive medicine.
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Hospital of the Year
Hospital of the Year is an annual issue of The SafeCare Group that recognizes the one hospital that:
1. Consistently outperformed all other US hospitals for all four quarters of the year in the holistic, evidence-based metrics of 100safecarehospitals.com.
2. Demonstrated superior achievements in the balanced hospital scorecard of hospital charges, timely care, medical errors, unplanned readmissions, and hospital-acquired infections.
