September 13, 2024- The American Hospital Association (AHA) released a new report finding that hospital and health system performance on key patient safety and quality measures was better in the first quarter of 2024 than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic, and that hospitals made these improvements while caring for patients with more significant health care needs.
For the report, Vizient provided a risk-adjusted analysis of data from a wide spectrum of 715 general acute care hospitals across 49 states and the District of Columbia with data from the fourth quarter of 2019 through the first quarter of 2024. Key findings include that despite being sicker and having more complex conditions, 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. Also, hospitals cared for more patients overall in the first quarter of 2024 than in the last quarter of 2019, including providing care to a sicker, more complex patient population.