(Joint Commission: Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois) -- According to a recent report, Joint Commission-accredited hospitals in the United States have steadily improved the quality of patient care during a six-year period, saving lives and improving the health of thousands of patients. “Improving America’s Hospitals: The Joint Commission’s Annual Report on Quality and Safety 2008,” an analysis of National Patient Safety Goal compliance and hospital quality measures related to heart attacks, heart failure, pneumonia, or surgical conditions, provides scientific evidence of improved patient care.

The report shows that hospitals deliver varying levels of quality, and some hospitals perform better than others in treating particular conditions. For example, hospitals provided discharge instructions to heart failure patients on average 92.1 percent of the time in the highest-performing state, but provided discharge instructions 56.5 percent of the time in the lowest-performing state. The performance difference among states is greater than 10 percentage points on 12 of the 24 quality measures tracked by The Joint Commission in 2007. There are exceptions to this variability. For example, virtually all accredited hospitals in the United States report that they measure oxygen in the bloodstream of patients with pneumonia.

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