Fewer Hospital Patients Harmed by Bedsores and Injuries
leapfroggroup.orgNo one who enters a hospital for care expects to be harmed or sickened accidentally. Unfortunately, preventable errors and mishaps are all too common, occurring during one in six hospital admissions and killing at least 500 people a day in the U.S. The Leapfrog Group, the national nonprofit watchdog run by employers and other large purchasers of health benefits, tracks many of these problems and publicly reports them by hospital.
Castlight Health’s analysis of Leapfrog’s data finds some good news: the incidence of serious pressure ulcers (often known as “bedsores”) and injuries has declined over the past four years. The bad news: only about a third of reporting hospitals in the U.S. (35 percent) met Leapfrog’s standard on preventing both.