Hospitals Improve Survival Rates While Treating Sicker Patients Thomson Healthcare S...(Institute of Healthcare Improvement (IHI...),Health

"The objective of quality initiatives like the 100,000 Lives Campaign is to convince U.S. hospitals to uniformly adopt beneficial practices that were previously used inconsistently," noted Safavi. "The fact that the inpatient survival rate has been continuously rising -- despite increasing severity of illness -- indicates that this goal is being achieved."

"We are encouraged by the results of this study, which echo the IHI's own findings that significant numbers of unnecessary hospital deaths were avoided over the last two years," said Donald Berwick, M.D., president and CEO of IHI. "We applaud the hospital staff whose hard work across many quality initiatives including -- but not limited to the 100,000 Lives Campaign -- is responsible for these important improvements."

According to CHI's analysis, in 1998, the estimated actual in-hospital survival rate was 97.8 percent, compared to an expected survival rate of 97.6 percent, based on increasing acuity of hospital patients during that period. By 2003, the variance had grown, as the actual survival rate remained at 97.8 percent while the predicted rate had decreased to 97.3 percent.

Between 2003 and mid-2006, the study showed, the gap continued to widen, as estimated actual in-hospital death rates dropped 13 percent while predicted death rates increased nearly 30 percent. By June 2006, the actual survival rate was at 98.1 percent, while the predicted survival rate had dropped to 96.9 percent.

CHI used two proprietary Thomson Healthcare inpatient databases for its study of mortality and inpatient acuity: the Projected Inpatient Database (PIDB), the primary data source for trends between 199
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