By 2022, avoidable adverse patient safety events across the U.S. and Western Europe, including healthcare-associated infections, sepsis and diagnostic errors, could cost $383.7 billion, according to a Frost & Sullivan analysis.
Frost & Sullivan assessed the 30 most pressing safety adverse events affecting patients, caregivers, and healthcare organizations worldwide. These events also included medication safety, pressure ulcers, antibiotic resistance and hand hygiene non-compliance.
All together, these adverse events affected around 91.8 million patient admissions in the U.S. and Western Europe, which resulted in approximately 1.95 million deaths.
"Up to 17 percent of all hospitalizations are affected by one or more adverse events and around 15 percent of hospital expenditure is attributable to addressing them," said Anuj Agarwal, transformational healthcare senior research analyst at Frost & Sullivan. "The fact that 30 to 70 percent of these are potentially avoidable makes it imperative to prevent them from happening."
Care providers should focus their patient safety value proposition toward areas with significant disruptive potential, such as antibiotic resistance, cybersecurity, avoidable emergency department admissions, pressure ulcers and sepsis, Mr. Agarwal said.