News: Patients hospitalized in 2024 more likely to survive than in 2019, report shows

A new report from the American Hospital Association (AHA) suggests that key patient safety and quality indicators in United States hospitals are better in 2024 than they were in 2019.

The Vizient database from which the report was created contained more than 1,300 hospitals nationwide, and data from 10 million inpatients and 180 million outpatients.

According to the report, the breakdown for the types of health systems examined were comprehensive academic medical centers (16%), large specialized complex care medical centers (21%), complex care medical centers (23%), and community hospitals (41%).

“[N]ew analyses,” the authors of the report noted, “show not only a rebound but an improvement on pre-pandemic performance in patient safety.” In fact, the authors noted this despite the fact that patient acuity has increased 3% since 2019.

Here are some notable statistics from the report:

• “Despite being sicker and more complex, hospitalized patients in the first quarter of 2024 were on average over 20% more likely to survive than expected given the severity of their illnesses compared to the fourth quarter of 2019.”
• “Based on Vizient’s analysis, the AHA using national hospitalization data projects that while caring for sicker patients, hospitals’ efforts to improve safety led to 200,000 Americans hospitalized between April 2023 and March 2024 surviving episodes of care they wouldn’t have in 2019.”
• “Not only did multiple key preventive health screenings rapidly rebound to pre-pandemic levels, but ongoing improvement has led to a 60%-to-80% increase in breast, colon and cervical cancer screenings in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the fourth quarter 2019.”

Editor’s note: To read the AHA report, click here.