The recently released Maryland Hospital Association Report on Quality revealed the state's hospitals have reduced many healthcare-associated infections and errors and improved hand hygiene compliance in 2014.
Highlighted below are the findings from the report.
HAIs and infection control
- Maryland hospitals improved hand hygiene compliance rates to an average of 90 percent in 2014, up from 87 percent in 2013.
- In 2014, 90 percent of the hospitals reported zero central line-associated bloodstream infections each month.
- Eighty-three percent of the hospitals reported zero catheter-associated urinary tract infections.
- In 2014, the number of ventilator-associated complications declined by 55 percent from the previous year.
- Maryland hospitals reported nearly 100 percent compliance in ensuring appropriate positioning of patients' upper bodies and heads when ventilators were used.
- For every 1,000 days patients used a ventilator in 2014, there was less than one day of ventilator-associated pneumonia in reporting hospitals.
- Two-thirds of the Maryland hospitals reported zero colon surgical site infections per month. The number of SSIs statewide decreased by two-thirds in 2014 from the year before.
Patient care and safety
- From 2013 to 2014, occurrences of obstetrical hemorrhage dropped by over 20 percent, while the number of obstetric lacerations fell by 14 percent.
- Maryland's infant mortality rate has declined by more than 22 percent in the past decade.
- In the past three years, hospitals' ratings from the Maryland Patient Safety Medication Survey for communication of drug orders and other drug information increased by 15 percent.
- The readmission rate for the state's hospitals dropped by more than 4 percent from 2013 to 2014, a difference of more than 5,000 readmissions.
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