Joint Commission says hospitals lag on key quality measures

Hospitals may be boosting their performance, but they're still falling behind on most of the Joint Commission's key measures of quality, according to the group's annual report on quality and safety. Hospitals seem to be doing well in four of the quality measurement areas, including heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia care and surgical care, with 90 percent of hospitals achieving 90 percent compliance to Joint Commission standards. However, in other areas hospital performance was dramatically worse. For example, hospitals aren't doing as well as they could in prescribing ACE inhibitors when heart failure patients are discharged, the Joint Commission report said.

The Joint Commission also noted that quality varies substantially between high-performing and low-performing facilities, a problem well-documented by quality researchers but still proving intractable for the industry as a whole. My question: What will it take to bring a "variability reduction" mindset to care? And while we're at it, is there good evidence that pointing out gaps is making a measurable impact on quality?

To learn more about the report:
- read this Modern Healthcare article

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