HHS: Quality initiatives prevent 15,000 deaths, save $4 billion

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that quality efforts resulted in an overall 9% decrease in hospital-acquired conditions nationally during 2011 and 2012. Over that time, HHS estimates that these efforts prevented nearly 15,000 hospital deaths, avoided 560,000 patient injuries, and saved approximately $4 billion.

The hospital readmission rate also dropped from 19% to 18.5% in 2012 and 17.5% in 2013, which works out to an 8% reduction in the rate and about 150,000 fewer hospital readmissions among Medicare beneficiaries between January 2012 and December 2013. The HHS attributes the decreases to the efforts of public-private partnerships that work with healthcare providers to spread best practices and solutions.

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