Elkridge, MD – Maryland’s hospitals are utilizing a new web site, qualitymattersmaryland.org, to share the powerful and life-saving techniques they are employing to make hospital care safer for Marylanders.
Patient safety and the quality of care delivered to patients have always been paramount for hospitals, and significant progress has been made in recent years. Maryland’s hospitals:
Achieved a 33% decrease in potentially preventable complications between 2013 and 2015, eliminating 11,700 such complications in that timeframe
Decreased the rate of surgical site infections by 39 percent between March 2015 and February 2016
Reduced the rate of two common hospital ailments – C. difficile infections and surgical site infections related to abdominal hysterectomies – by 10 percent and 21 percent, respectively, compared to expected rates
Saw ventilator-associated pneumonia rates drop to less than one day for every 1,000 days of ventilator use
The web site is designed to help the public understand trends in hospital quality and safety, and provides hospitals themselves with an additional resource for best practices and novel ideas. It provides descriptions of the methods that successful hospitals and hospital units have used to drive down infection rates and readmissions, as well as other quality measures.
“Keeping patients safe is at the heart of every hospital’s mission,” said MHA President & CEO Carmela Coyle. “These data, and the stories of hospitals that have made care safer for patients, demonstrate the extraordinary commitment hospitals have made to provide the highest quality care.”
