Latest Takeaways

September 17, 2024
Reporter
Quality & Safety
"Health systems are performing better on quality measures in 2024 than they were in 2019, signaling an improvement from worsened patient outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a report from the American Hospital Association and Vizient. The number of breast, colon and cervical cancer screenings at health systems has increased by an average of 60% over the past five years, and patients generally have lower risk of mortality or hospital acquired infections."

Executive Summary

Updated: October 25, 2024

  • Readmission rates for fiscal 2025 saw fewer hospitals getting large penalties compared with fiscal 2024. For at least the past four years, the number of hospitals given penalties of 1% or more by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services under its Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program has dropped.
  • Hospitals with the lowest percentage of people eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid coverage in peer group 1 once again received the highest percentage of penalties of more than 1% from CMS. Peer group 1 also had the highest percentage of hospitals with no penalties based on their performance in reducing excess readmissions.
  • Almost all hospital types saw their median fiscal 2023 net rating increase after a drop in fiscal 2022 Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey ratings. Only small critical-access hospitals (hospitals with less than $10 in net patient revenue) saw their rating decline, but that group also had more than a 15% decrease in the number of surveys returned compared with fiscal 2022.
  • About 4% fewer hospitals reported survey results in fiscal 2023, compared with 2019, for whether patients would recommend the hospital. The number of surveys returned dropped 20% from 2019, to about 2.3 million returned in 2023.

 

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