Medical center reduces rate of acute-care deaths during national campaign

The rate of acute-care deaths at UC Davis Medical Center decreased during an 18-month campaign by more than 1,700 hospitals around the United States to reduce the number of preventable deaths by 100,000.

The medical center participated in the “100K Lives Campaign,” sponsored by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, along with partners that include the American Medical Association and other leading private- and public-sector health-care organizations. In addition to reducing the number of unintended deaths by 100,000 over 18 months, the campaign also aimed to maintain this progress in succeeding years. To accomplish this, the campaign urged the participating hospitals to implement some or all of six best practices that have proven to reduce patient harm and death.

In recent years, medical errors have received national attention, with much of it stemming from an Institute of Medicine report, “To Err is Human.” The Institute of Medicine estimates that approximately 100,000 Americans die each year as a result of medical errors.

In January 2005, when the “100K Lives Campaign” began, the rate of acute-care deaths at UC Davis Medical Center was 2.38 (the number of acute-care deaths divided by the number of acute-care discharges). Over the next 15 months, the rate steadily decreased. The rate reached a low in September 2005 of 1.27. In March 2006, the last month for which figures are available for the campaign at the medical center, the rate was 1.49.

Allan Siefkin, Chief Medical Officer of UC Davis Health System, said that the six best practices endorsed by the campaign do not constitute the sole reason for the decline in acute-care deaths. However, Siefkin said, “I think that they contributed a great deal to raising people’s awareness of issues that in the past have had fragmented solutions. They also brought us together as a health system to identify issues and work to improve the care of all our patients.

“Many, many people worked very hard on these measures and we still have work to do on a number of them. I appreciate everyone’s hard work and dedication to improving the care of patients at the health system.”

The 100K Lives Campaign is just one of the efforts undertaken by UC Davis Health System to improve the quality of patient care. Descriptions of three others follow:

• University HealthSystem Consortium’s Quality Measurement and Reporting System. UC Davis Health System participates in several components of this program, which produces quarterly reports benchmarking participating hospitals on several key quality metrics tracked by national standard-setting agencies such as the Leapfrog Group, JCAHO Core Measures, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. For more on this program, click here.

• National Quality Forum. This not-for-profit membership organization has developed and implemented a national strategy for health-care quality measurement and reporting. Its mission is to improve American health care through the endorsement of consensus-based national standards for the measurement and public reporting of health-care performance data that describe whether care is safe, timely, beneficial, patient-centered, equitable and efficient. For more on this program, click here.

• Patient Safety Consortium. UC Davis is one of about 20 California hospitals participating in this collaborative project sponsored by Stanford University. It is aimed at improving the implementation of effective patient safety practices in hospitals.