Hospital Collaboration May Boost Surgical Patient Safety

Sharing data on successful medical practices helped cut complication rates, study found

From a Health Day News Item

By Robert Preidt
Monday, October 18, 2010

MONDAY, Oct. 18 (HealthDay News) — The rate of surgical complications decreased nearly 10 percent at 16 Michigan hospitals after they began to share information about what methods they use to keep patients safe, a new study has found.

Among the 300,000 study patients who underwent general and vascular surgery between 2005 and 2007, the reduction in ventilator-associated pneumonia alone could save $13 million a year in health care spending, the findings indicated.

The program, called the Michigan Surgical Quality Collaborative, is led by the University of Michigan.

“The collaboration of hospitals in terms of identifying and disseminating information about best practices is actually a much more effective way of improving quality than just relying on each hospital alone to come up with what they think is a way to improve quality,” study author Dr. Darrell A. Campbell Jr., a professor of surgery and chief medical officer at the University of Michigan Health System, said in a university news release.