Patient Safety Events Cost Medicare $6.9 Billion 2005-2007

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Palm Beach Gardens, FL -- Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center announced that for the third straight year it has received the HealthGrades Patient Safety Excellence Award.

The top five percent of all hospitals in the U.S., 242 hospitals, received the award in a report issued by the leading independent healthcare ratings organization.

Palm Beach Gardens is one of only 16 hospitals in the country to be an America’s 50 Best Hospital and Patient Safety Award Recipient.

If all hospitals performed at the level of Patient Safety Excellence Award™ hospitals, approximately 211,697 patient safety events and 22,771 Medicare deaths could have been avoided while saving the U.S. approximately $2 billion in 2005-2007.

“Continuing our high standards for patient safety and quality of performance has always been a top priority of our physicians and staff,” said Dave Pettit, PBGMC CEO. “It’s great to have HealthGrades confirm that we continue to achieve our goals for the third year in a row. We thank our talented staff for this honor.”

The sixth annual HealthGrades Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study applies methodology developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to identify incident rates of 15 patient safety indicators.  The study looked at rates among Medicare patients at virtually all the nation's nearly 5,000 nonfederal hospitals.

HealthGrades also applied its methodology using 12 patient safety indicators to identify the best-performing hospitals, or Patient Safety Excellence Award™ Hospitals.  HealthGrades developed this award to give patients more information about choosing a hospital.

During the study period, eight patient safety indicators showed improvement, while seven worsened. The overall incidence rate remained virtually unchanged compared to last year’s study

In  2005-2007, 913,215 total patient safety events were recorded among Medicare beneficiaries, which represents 2.3 percent of the nearly 38 million Medicare hospitalizations. This equates to one reported patient safety event every 1.7 minutes.

“I don’t know of any other industry where errors that cause harm are as accepted as they are in healthcare. Every hospital across the country should continually strive for improvement until their rate of patient safety events is as close to zero as possible,” said Rick May, MD, senior physician consultant at HealthGrades and co-author of the study.

“We congratulate Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center because they continually demonstrate their extraordinary commitment to the reduction of patient safety events.”

The study considered these patient safety indicators:

• Complications of anesthesia
• Death in low mortality Diagnostic Related Groupings (DRGs)
• Decubitus ulcer (bed sores)
• Death among surgical inpatients with serious treatable complications
• Iatrogenic pneumothorax
• Selected infections due to medical care
• Post-operative hip fracture
• Post-operative hemorrhage or hematoma 
• Post-operative physiologic and metabolic derangements
• Post-operative respiratory failure
• Post-operative pulmonary embolism or deep vein thrombosis
• Post-operative sepsis
• Post-operative abdominal wound dehiscence
• Accidental puncture or laceration
• Transfusion reaction.
  
  About Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center
  Recognized by HealthGrades as one of “America’s 50 Best Hospitals” for the second year in a row, PBGMC is a 199-bed acute care hospital serving the medical and health care needs of Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast for 40 years.

PBGMC offers a broad range of services, including the #1 ranked open-heart and comprehensive cardiac care program in the state, according to HealthGrades. It also offers, orthopedics, diagnostic imaging, general surgery, outpatient surgery and 24-hour emergency care. For more information or physician referral,  call 561-625-5070.