Hospital campaign saves lives

A hospital patient-safety campaign to reduce medical errors and preventable deaths has exceeded its goals nationwide and in Utah, where more than half the state's hospitals participated.

About 3,100 hospitals, including at least 28 in Utah, signed onto the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's "100,000 Lives" campaign. The group estimates that participating hospitals saved 122,300 lives in the last 18 months by taking steps to decrease medical mistakes and improve care.

In Utah, 494 lives were counted as saved, exceeding the goal of 445, said Linda Johnson, project coordinator for HealthInsight, Utah's Medicare Quality Improvement Program, which aided the campaign's Utah efforts. The participating hospitals account for about three-fourths of hospital beds in the country and 80 percent of hospital discharges.

"We did a good job in the 100,000 Lives campaign as a state. Their measurement was fairly complex, and the state numbers are not totally accurate," she said.

The report had several disclaimers about the state numbers, but Johnson noted that inaccuracies would err on the side of an undercount of saved lives.

The campaign also gave hospitals a much-appreciated chance to work together rather than just compete, she said, and it provided an opportunity to showcase ongoing efforts to save lives.

"We should be looking at ways to deliver the right care to the right patient every time," Johnson said, "and if we do, lives can be saved."

One Utah hospital, for instance, has not had a single ventilator-related pneumonia case in five months, according to her data.

The campaign asked hospitals to adopt at least one of six life-saving practices: Deploy rapid response teams at the first sign of patient decline; deliver evidence-based, best-practice care for heart attacks; prevent adverse drug reactions, central line infections, surgical site infections and ventilator-associated pneumonia, using specific proven tactics.

Most Utah hospitals chose to participate on a few of the recommended practices. And various hospitals had already implemented some of the practices when the campaign was launched.

"A lot we were already doing or had moved beyond," said Daron Cowley, Intermountain Healthcare spokesman. "We participated fully."

Still, he added, they saw improvements, even in areas they had already begun to tackle. Intermountain estimates that in 2004 and 2005, an additional 150 lives were saved through closely monitoring the use of ventilators in intensive care units. And cases of ventilator-associated pneumonia "dropped considerably."