​MEDIOCRE HOSPITAL OUTCOMES
Analyzing The Puzzle of Poor U.S. Hospital Care With Recommendations

Consider the following:
  • 1 of 5 (20%) patients are readmitted within 30 days of hospital discharges;
  • 1 of 25 patients contract an infection while hospitalized;
  • ​Of the 1.7 million adult sepsis cases annually, there are 270,000 deaths;
  • Medication-related reactions account for up to 106,000 deaths annually;
  • Preventable hospital deaths from medical errors range from about 250,000 - 440,000.
The 2022 report from The SafeCare Group was designed to assess hospital systems performance in relevant outcomes metrics. A comparison analysis of various for-profit versus non-profit hospital systems was performed for the report.
Hospital systems were compared based on similar number of hospitals within the corporate network, and matched up in five outcomes categories. There were significant conclusions drawn from the findings in the report.
What is needed to improve U.S. outcomes are reforms with teeth and more precise alignment of financial incentives. These reforms should address:
  • Lack of hospital systems executive accountability;
  • Ineffective CMS pay-for-performance programs;
  • Unpoliced GPO anticompetitive business practices;
  • Overabundance of defensive medicine:
  • Obsolete hospital accreditation methods.​