Basic innovations saved 100K+ lives in US hospitals

Almost every post here is on a new technology, a novel way of looking at things of doing them, but I have not been able to cite how much these "healthcare innovations" are truly changing the way people's health are cared for.

So it was a stroke of fortune that the WSJ reported on June 15th about how new practices adopted by hospitals have indeed cut down on errors and thus saved lives, which has been a major goal of the Institute of Medicine. In the AP article titled "Hospital Initiative to Cut Errors Finds About 122,300 Lives Saved," Donald Berwick (the Harvard professor who headed the initiaitive) said, "I think this campaign signals no less than a new standard of health care in America."

About 3,100 hospitals participated in the project, sharing mortality data and carrying out study-tested procedures that prevent infections and mistakes. "We in health care have never seen or experienced anything like this," said Dennis O'Leary, president of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.

The JCAHO is the national board that regulates hospitals.

Medical mistakes were the focus of a widely noted 1999 national report that estimated 44,000 to 98,000 Americans die each year as a result of errors and low-quality care. That year, Dr. Berwick -- president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit organization -- challenged health-care leaders to improve care quality and prevent mistakes.

In December 2004, he stepped up the challenge by announcing a "100,000 Lives Campaign." He set a June 14, 2006, deadline to sign up at least 2,000 U.S. hospitals in the effort and implement six types of changes.

Among the six changes were "rapid-response teams for emergency care of patients whose vital signs suddenly deteriorate [operating] around the clock to other units," "checks and rechecks of patient medications to protect against drug errors," and "preventing surgical-site infections by following certain guidelines, including giving patients antibiotics before their operations."

The effort was endorsed by federal health officials, health insurers, hospital industry leaders, the American Medical Association and others. The roughly 3,100 hospitals that signed up represented about 75% of the nation's acute-care beds. About 86% sent in mortality data. Roughly a third said they were implementing all six measures, and more than half committed to at least three, Dr. Berwick said.

This is great news because it shows simple systematic changes (as opposed to increasing the education of medical professional) can make a big difference, akin to the introduction of hand-washing in hospitals causing a dramatic decrease in the number of deaths and infections in hospitals.

Innovations do save lives, especially it seems the simplest low-cost ones.